[Geek Alert…]

When I’m working with my hands, and trying to completely focus my mind on what my fingers are doing, I’ll close my eyes, so as to tune out the visual, in favor of the tactile. This is something I’ve done ever since I was a kid working on a new model car or a slot car or a Heathkit assembly.  It’s a reflex, something akin I think to how I sometimes stare off into nowhere when I’m concentrating on something someone is saying to me.

So I’m in the darkroom trying to load some film into the tank.  I had a roll of sprocket damaged film I was trying to get onto a developing reel and because it was damaged it was fighting me.  I kept trying to wind it, and felt it kinking and knew that it had jumped the track, rewound and started over.  It was getting frustrating.  I realized in the middle of all this that I’m closing my eyes to concentrate on the feel of the film going into the reel.  Yet I was doing this in complete darkness anyway.  There couldn’t have been anything more superfluous just then, then closing my eyes.  Yet I kept on doing it.  Even when I realized I was doing it, and thought to stop myself.  I couldn’t concentrate on not closing my eyes, and getting the film wound correctly at the same time.  So I stopped fighting my eyelids and focused my attention on getting the film wound. 

I don’t think that’s a habit I got into.  It’s some sort of brain reflex.