Life seems to be a collection of unique experiences. These experiences can exist mostly in the real world, or they can exist in an abstract or imaginary world. When doing something like cutting down trees or soldering a circuit, I consider that to be completely concentrated on the real world. You are extremely focused on one “real” thing, on which you have a unique perspective. One person may see a tree with a thin slice in it, while you may see a strategy well or poorly implemented. One person may see a seemingly random organization of melted metal, while you see an abstract circuit design.
But when I am in the real world with sensory stimulation that requires little to no concentration, sometimes I can feel like I am completely in a different world. If I am sitting on a couch listening to good music with nothing else in the room to grab my attention, I can be in a completely different fantasy world in my head. A passer-by will see a guy sitting on a couch nodding his head while staring at the floor.
There are also other situations in which you can feel almost completely removed from reality. One such situation for me is when I am hacking. I am completely concentrated on my command prompt or other related interface. My virtual sense of where I am almost overtakes my other senses. My sense of sight is little more than a tool to transfer information from this other experience to the real-world experience.
In essence, I sometimes have the feeling that I am in more than one place, or experience if we’d like to use the popular word of this moment, in a given day. My experience hacking can be completely separated from my sensory overload in the real world that is a walk down a city street.