Over the last year or so, I’ve discovered that I’ve become incapable of certain types of multitasking. I phrase it that way because I don’t feel like it was always this way.
The thing that triggered me to notice is my wife’s ability to play handheld video games and watch a movie or a TV show at the same time. She can solve 4 puzzles in Picross 3D in record time and immediately tell you the entire plot of the episode of Supernatural that was playing while she was doing it.
I used to be able to do exactly that. I was even able to put something on I’d never seen before and play a brand new game and follow both of them just fine. Now, though, my brain has to sacrifice one or the other. I either turn into the world’s worst gamer (a title I’m not far off from owning anyway), or I’m that annoying guy who’s constantly asking what the fuck just happened on the the TV. We’ve tried to play board games or card games while watching TV, and I spend half the time asking for a recap of whatever it was she just did in the game.
Now look, I’m not entirely sure this is any kind of marketable skill, but damned if I don’t miss it. I got a lot of leisurely activity crammed into a couple hours with that skill, and now I feel like an asylum inmate doped up on meds, staring vacantly at the boob tube. It’s even starting to creep into other parts of my life. I absolutely can not, for example, listen to any music with lyrics while I’m writing. My creative brain just completely shuts down the moment I hear Dave Grohl’s voice. Well, maybe that’s not unique to me, but you get the point.
This, like any other odd and useless skill, makes me feel old to have lost it. Like a parent who scoffs at a video game controller or can’t program a VCR.
Fuck, I just made a VCR reference.
My point made, I guess I’m going to bed. At 9pm.
Get off my lawn.
