Focus

 

On occasion it starts with a notification. Maybe it's a text or an email that my Mac has kindly let me know about, floating a little banner at the top of my screen. Maybe it's my dog, who is lifting my arm with his nose to let me know it is time for a pee. Maybe it is my cat meowing out his hunger, or my Guinea pig whooping at me for attention. Maybe it is my daughter looking for her other shoe. Maybe it is the temperature in the room, or my tendency to be itchy. Maybe it is just intrusive thoughts: How weird is it that I (do, or don't do) some such thing? Certainly I have earned a second cup of coffee or a snack by now.

 

It's a funny sort of word, snack. I sometimes watch reruns of VEEP, and I am always amazed when the main character, conniving Selena Myers, demands a snack from Gary, her bagman. "Snack!" she'll yell, and I always think, What an odd, vulnerable, childlike word for her to use. Snack

 

Wait, did I just lose focus over the word snack, and not even over the desire for a snack?

Why do we lose focus when we're working on our writing? Is it so hard to justify the pursuit of a good story? Why is that notification more important? Certainly being itchy is impossible to ignore, so that's on biology, and not me, right? Snack... what a funny little word, why I am distracted by funny little words when I am trying to string a load of words together in a clever and interesting way?

As I have aged I have found myself in contemplation of myself more and more. I suppose it's not that odd; if I am going to get me "right," it's getting to be a "now or never" situation. And I want what I think a lot of people want at my age (my 50s) more time. But, the time I have, I am being distracted and contemplating the word snack.

 

Certainly, I would guess, from what I know of him, Picasso never had trouble making time for his art. Are the most successful artists the most immune to distraction? The most selfish? The most egotistical? Is a huge ego what I'm missing? Oh man my cheek is itchy right now.

 

What do I feel like having for dinner?

 

As I contemplate myself, I think I might know a bit more about my own distraction. I am pretty sure, having gone through all the diagnostics for my child, that I, too, have ADD. She and I are not genetically related, so that's not the clue I needed, but, looking at my own lifespan, I do think a lot of my distraction comes from a rather fraught childhood. Fraught, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but I grew up in a co-dependent household. If you feel equally troubled by lack of focus, that might be something for you to consider too. It is the negative side of it. If we were constantly on the lookout for trouble coming down the pike and working out how to head it off as best as possible, that makes us the sort of folks whose eyes are constantly darting around. My eyes and ears are usually on alert.

 

And that is rather a negative reason for lack of focus. Maybe even a bit sad.

 

On the other hand, I am a person who contemplates the word snack.

 

I am a person with a tree in front of my house that opens up pods to drop what can only be described as teddy-bear stuffing once a year, and I gather it all up, and run my fingers through it, toss the seeds, sometimes blow tuffs of it on the wind, sometimes put it in the bushes for nesting birds to find. It's a marvelous tree, even if the trunk is covered in quite pointy spikes. It's a punk rock tree with a softer side.

 

I am a person who leaves her house to walk the dog and comes back with stories to tell about people I saw, scenes I witnessed, plants I photographed, lizards I was startled by....

 

I am eternally, and, sometimes, I must admit, rudely or intrusively, curious. Not because I want to judge, but because I want to know. I remember, on the many times I have driven across the woodsy state of Pennsylvania, seeing houses, barns, or just a light on a hillside in the dark of night, and thinking, I want to drive right to that house/barn/light and interview those people, and live among them, and find out why they are where they are and why they are doing what they're doing. I am curious, and, primarily, my curiosity is about people. Not that I wouldn't take a bit of quantum physics, but really, it's all because of people: people are the beginning and the end of why things are the way they are, and that is interesting. And it is hard for me to pull my eyes, ears, and, most of all, thoughts, from the most interesting show on Earth. Not always a pleasant, or kind, or funny, or even particularly engaging show, but always interesting by its very nature.

 

Are you a person who struggles to focus on the things you really want to do? Do you struggle to create and hold space, time, a slot in the schedule for it? Do you feel other things are more interesting or worthy?

 

What do you do when those feelings come calling, unwelcome and unbidden, which doesn't mean that they are not beguiling all the same?

And my brain has just answered one of my questions: ham and cabbage. 

Ridiculous: there is neither ham nor cabbage in the house, but I am certain I can smell it, bubbling away in a pot, and I want some, mushed into boiled potatoes with a great heap of butter on top.

Of course, no one else in my house would eat that for dinner, except, maybe, my one pork-obsessed cat. That is a dinner from childhood that has come calling into my memory, and if I could have it right now, I would even put up with the well and truly overcooked green beans tossed into the pot because there must be some green. What mush, and what a waste of their bean lives. But I can still smell the smell, same as if I was ten and very hungry after school.

Those below me on the age scale call ADD their superpower. It certainly makes for an interesting life, to be perpetually distracted and fascinated all at the same time. 

Do you have the focus superpower? How have you achieved it?