#visual stimulation

Hello!!! The caption says "fixing clothes" but I promise that is not what my mind is thinking about when it comes to Hyunjin, on his damn knees, at exactly the right height to be sucking on a strap or a cock. Which is kind of what this actually looks like.

Like a lot of people with ADHD, attention span difficulties, etc. I have a lot of difficulty with audio processing. I can’t take in auditory information for very long. Any sort of distraction tends to make the audio roll right past my ears without a single word entering my brain--which can be a problem when my own brain is the distraction. I can usually manage when the source of the audio is a live person--I can usually keep up with a conversation, and I managed pretty well with school as long as I kept notes--but the thought of say, sitting down and listening to a podcast feels sort of painful. I always want to be looking at something, even if it’s the people speaking (which is why Critical Role works for me where other DnD podcasts don’t, because I can look at the screen and see their faces, even if I usually watch while cooking or something). 

It’s pretty well-known that people can deal with this sort of thing with habits like doodling or knitting. I personally find that simple phone games keep me just stimulated enough to be able to process audio information a lot better. However, I work in a job that sometimes requires me to actively listen to audio for 2-3 hours straight, and phone games aren’t enough to get through that sometimes.

So you know how people often find music makes it easier to focus on tasks like studying or writing? I’ve been finding that certain types of videos work as a visual equivalent to relaxing music. It used to be that the idea of trying to perform any task with a television on would make me cringe--television is visually noisy and demanding, and even with the sound off, I find it as distracting as blasting heavy metal. But it turns out, slower videos that involve no text, no faces (if I see a person talking, I start trying to guess what they’re saying), few rapid cuts, etc. provide the visual equivalent of classical music to my brain. I’ve found that even when I’m not necessarily doing audio work, but am just struggling to keep myself on task, putting one of these in the corner of my screen satisfies my desire to multitask without actually luring me slack off. I can glance at it every few seconds before going back to my work. As an added benefit, they’re all very relaxing.

So if this is something that might be helpful for you, here’s a few of my favorite video stimulants. 

Cooking Tree is an ASMR cooking channel, but I almost never watch it with the sound on. Unlike most cooking channels, she never speaks or shows her face, and there is minimal text on the screen, so it’s calming instead of distracting. There are hundreds of videos, so letting them autoplay one after another keeps things interesting.

My youtube recs have been filling up with so many wonderful aquarium videos ever since I started watching the Monterey Bay jellycam. The nice thing about livestreams is that you never feel like you’re missing something if you stop paying attention to it, because it’s literally always running. I’ve also been enjoying the Osaka Aquarium 12-hour video for when I want sea pancakes instead of jellies. 

Drone footage is always nice, though I find there’s a lot more crap out there to sift through. Sometimes “three hours of drone footage” actually means “20 minutes of footage we just looped several times.”