hello i am"attention"

what is my attention? what part of me directs me and sends me forward into the future? it's all of me, in a way, and it's made more complicated by my loose grasp of time and grand sense of scale, and the executive function problems that feel like solar storms lashing out at all my other brain systems so nothing works. so it's the parts of the brain, working together in the aether, the runoff from the activity, the light between everything. an observer, a recorder, a reactor, and an anticipator.

i am not paying attention. that would imply and entangle me into a transaction with reality, although i am giving it something, this metaphor misunderstands the situation: i do not want anything in particular, or anything at all, back from the surroundings, i would prefer less. the attention is a gift, or something even less attenuated, a mere byproduct of its past self and not necessarily something that can be expected to give anything to the outside, to anything that is not attention.

the attention demands to improve at attending, shaping experiences into a looping gauntlet of support and tests and side quests that seem to be beyond the current ability tree's capacity, although in reality they are not.