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12) Sometimes I'm physically tired, and I sleep. But sometimes my exhaustion is mental. My mind will be spinning, my RAM full of everything important to me. Because I don't have much disk space, and don't trust it much. I live my life in my RAM.
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13) Even if I wanted to empty it out, I couldn't. For better or for worse, those thoughts valuable enough for my active memory don't leave it. For most people, short-term memory is reserved for things you'll soon forget.
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15) So, anyway, sometimes my mind is too full, or full of things demanding and exhausting. I want it to calm down. I'll try to lie on the beanbag, but it doesn't help. My mind is still spinning. Clinging to its looping thoughts. I lie awake, an insomniac once more.
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16) I'll get up, and go to Netflix, to try to distract myself. And it seems like a great start! But thoughts contain multitudes, and so does modern TV. There will be overlap--enough overlap--that my mind retains a foothold, grabbing at things it recognizes in the plot.
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17) And so my mind will keep spinning its wheels, exhausted or not. I'll close Netflix, and pull up some sports; but unless there are multiple games I care about on at that time, it's not compelling enough to distract me. Netflix was too compelling; sports, too boring.
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18) And so I'll open up League of Legends. And, without thinking, I'll enter a game, and draft, and start. (A side note on this: I know I've said it's name enough to imply I'm good at it, but I'm really not. It's actually embarrassing how little I've grown at it.)
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19) I should clarify, too, that I don't exactly find league fun, or learn much from it, or really get anything out of it, exactly. That's not the point. The point is that the game loads, and I spawn, and buy items, and walk to lane. And then my mind takes over.
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20) Some of my baser instincts--competition, mainly--will come out. And I'll dance around the minions, and last hit, and dodge, and poke, and last hit again, and ward, and heal, and fuck up and get my support killed because, again, I'm not very good at this game.
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21) But my mind is engaged, and concentrating, and focusing on gold and items and minions and health bars and skill shots and oh fuck I'm out of mana again, why did I tumble so much. And as my mind slowly melds into Vayne's, the fights fill up my RAM.
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23) And the old thought loop--the exhausting one--is forced out of my active consciousness, left to spin alone. Biding time. It'll be back. In a few minutes super minions will overrun our nexus and my mind will discard its League thoughts, welcoming back the old ones.
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24) But I've bought myself peace of mind for 30 minutes, and given myself time to do what generally happens during sleep: time to give my mind some rest, and respite. Time to process my thoughts, and consolidate them, and make peace with them. At least for a bit.
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Replying to and
This is me and CS:GO. I am the opposite-brain. My RAM is VERY constrained but my CPU is fast and my Hard Drive is basically infinite. Even a small overflow of RAM will short-circuit my CPU so i have to process "thru" things FAST. CS:GO refreshes my RAM and clears it out.
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My go-to for this is to play beatmania iidx. Other thought are impossible while in that zone.