Involuntary sensory degradation and related altered states of consciousness - or, more succinctly, the ways in which Chris feels he may be falling apart:

I don’t know when the onset of this first occurred, but my brain has been unable to focus on reading actual books for some time now. I get a chapter in and I’m overcome with an urge to sleep… yet I can read magazine articles and their online postings, blogs… I can surf tumblr-posted photos for hours on end. It’s a different kind of mental focus, I guess. I need to consider reading books on the computer. My brain could possibly be resisting an isolation from internet connectivity and other extended abilities which computers afford me; an isolation books require.

My eyes are exhibiting their own (intermittent) inability to focus and I now wonder if it’s stress or something else. I really don’t know if it’s just old age. I’ve always had borderline, not-needing-glasses-but-needing-them vision of 20/40. This is different. My current visual disconnect shows most evidently while walking down branded package laden aisles with their assault of differing font-rendered text in varying shapes and sizes. It’s less an inability to focus, than an overload of what to focus ON. I feel dizzy, annoyed, maybe even a little frightened due to my lack of comfort, and walk to the open ends of the aisles where the traffic of people pushing carts is much easier to focus on.

My left ear can hear quite well, yet at certain noise levels it exhibits what can only be compared to a speaker connection needing its corroded contacts cleaned, with an added noise value called pain. This has been ongoing for the better part of 15 years (and no, I haven’t said anything to a doctor… that would make too much sense).

I still don’t know how I really feel about all of this.

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