Silent movies - so it begins

"I have noticed lately that my attention span is shorter than it used to be. ... Movies are much too long. ... Have any of you noticed that your attention span has shortened?"
This is what one of my fellow Jewelry Artisans Community members chose as her topic for the daily thread a while ago.
Here's part of my own reply:
"It depends. Sometimes I notice that I have several devices turned on. It's okay for me to have background noise like a movie while I'm working on something (for myself, that doesn't include work for the library), but a movie, a blog post, and talking on the phone at the same time simply doesn't work, and sometimes I don't even notice I keep jumping back and forth between them. ... I have started trying to concentrate on one device or medium or activity. ..."

My life changed when I discovered wire crochet. I hadn't expected that because I always felt rather craft challenged from my experiences in school. I only started serious knitting after starting library school because it was more productive than the endless doodling which I used up paper like crazy with. Those were still the times when most teachers allowed knitting in class as long as it wasn't too loud - is that still a thing? - and all the other crafty things I tried seemed to be doomed from the start.
When I started crocheting with wire, it was a surprise not just for me how much patience I could muster for something creative.
For years, I wasn't happy if I didn't fiddle on something. I always carried some wire and my trusted crochet hook with me, on the train, in waiting rooms, for breaks. Over time, more techniques came along, some didn't last for long, some managed to hold my attention, most of those didn't work for taking them along, though.
I also always carried a book when I was out, but at home I read less and less. There were my crafts and the Internet and I could have background noise with my crafts (I was also one of the kids who always needed music for doing homework or housework), but audiobooks didn't work for me. Then I started working from home and didn't have my long commute for reading anymore.
Also, as mentioned above, I noticed how I kept jumping from one to the other much too quickly when I was stressed out by something - which was a lot over the last years.

I really feel I have to do something about it. Get back into books (and reading to the cats which helps me concentrating and they seem to enjoy it), actively turn off devices when turning on another one (and I don't even have a smartphone to carry around with me all the time), consciously do one thing at a time. Listen to radio again.
I wish I could say it's going fabulously, but while at the moment progress is still bumpy, I still seem to see at least a bit of improvement already.

Public domain via Wikipedia

Are you wondering now what that has to do with silent movies?
Watching silent movies has never been easy for me although I grew up with them. No, I'm not that old, they were re-runs on TV, thank you very much.
I mentioned around Christmas that I wasn't able to make it through "Little Lord Fauntleroy" with Mary Pickford because it didn't even have any music. You need a lot of attention for a silent movie and some are really long, too.

So I thought that could actually work quite well as a part of my "training". I'll be watching silent movies and writing about them here. Probably each post will say something like "typical silent movie overacting, dramatic/no/weird music (depending on who added music or not), had to watch it in two parts because it was so long", but I'll be doing my best.
There won't be a dedicated weekday, I will just have to see how it goes.

The first movie is already chosen after I watched a later "talkie" version today, maybe there will even be a comparison at some time.
I hope it will be not just training, but also a bit of fun for an old-fashioned lady like me.