Digi-Scene

Well, I finally have a term that describes my life in a nutshell, thanks to this URL. I've been self-diagnosed with continuous partial attention or CPA syndrome. This malady manifests itself as the ability to mainly focus on one task, while simultaneously monitoring other background tasks, just in case something more important or interesting comes up.

I recognized the symptoms when I found myself watching a Padres baseball game on the TV this last weekend while at the same time IMing a friend AND paying my bills online. How did I make the leap to a diagnosis of the more serious CPA syndrome rather than just a 24 hour case of multi-tasking? When I realized that I wasn't doing any of these tasks to save time or effort, it was merely because I didn't want to be stuck doing something that was irrelevant or boring. Heaven forbid that I should be bored, even during my leisure time. That was the lightbulb moment that let me know that I was dealing with something more insidious than merely trying to be efficient.

The only way I console myself after having been given this awful news is that at least I don't suffer from polyattentiveness. No one seems to want to hear about your batle with polyattentiveness, but if you mention CPA syndrome, they'll want to tell you all about their ability to do things like blog about an event AS IT IS HAPPENING.

I'm not that far gone. Yet.