Death by PowerPoint

It's really amazing how impressively tired I get as soon as someone fires up a power point "presentation." I really wonder if other people really get as worn out as I do, simply by sitting in a chair and reading (or trying to read) a bunch of slides with three lines of info each. I actually have trouble keeping my eyes in focus. I have to fight not to see double. I'm serious, it's like I'm drunk...

I suppose the only thing more amazing than how tired I get during a power point, is the fact that the presenters make so little effort to make their presentations more exciting than a funeral. No movement from the presenter. Droning voice. Pointless slides. Even something as minor as using colorful clip-art can stimulate your brain more than seeing a slide full of text, listening to the presenter read all the text word for word, then moving to the next slide.

Worse, was I didn't bring a notepad to doodle or write on. At one point I seriously considered writing on my arm just to keep from becoming a drooling vegetable. I didn't know if I could write in the presentation book I'm writing in now, nothing to do but sit. I could feel pieces of my mind melt away one by one, and spread across a vast darkness seeking to join the other lost consciousnesses. I was lost in the abyss. Free floating in nothingness, trying to keep my mind focused on something, anything, to keep it from descending even further into the unknown. But there was no stimulation, nothing to focus on, I had to focus on something. I wonder what would happen if I didn't fight it. If I would have just reduced to a catatonic state. And become on of those weird stories in the paper where some random person somehow breaks their brain in an unexplainable way...

An unidentified man was rushed to a hospital after he fell out of this chair at a presentation, and became unresponsive. Once at the hospital, doctors declared him to have somehow slipped into a coma. "He was awake, and watching the presentation like we all were, then he just fell out of his chair, and he was gone." said another patron of the presentation. No one has come forward to identify John Doe, so we've supplied a picture, but police are quite certain that he will be lost forever.

As the world withdrew further and further from my sight and my focus slipped from the conscious realm; I heard a magic word which echoed in my abyss. First it was muffled and underwater, then as the sound bounced closer it became more clear until it reached my ears clear and bright as the shine of the sun on a summer day in a rolling meadow.

"Break."

My mind, spread across the universe, coalesces instantly. I'm violently gripped by my chest and rocketed from the darkness. The nothingness whips my face and howls in my ears as I ascend. I snap back into consciousness so fast I fear I might have a stroke. For a brief moment I am reborn. Confused. Panicked. Scared. Blind. Lost....

Alive.

Fractions of a second later I regain my bearing, and immediately forget how closely I came to losing myself.

Onward to the next journey...