Focus

I don’t know how it is for you, but my guess is one of my real dilemmas in life is one most of you can relate to:  staying focused.  

I do enjoy how life bounces me around sometimes, from one cool project to another.  Maybe it’s filling bird feeders right now, then watching a football game for a couple of hours, then fixing dinner -- all while I had originally planned to sit and write a blog entry.  Somedays are like that.  The idea’s not quite there and one thing leads to another and then another, and before I know it, it’s late and the ‘work day’ is spent.  

About a year or so ago I became more aware of my penchant to flit from task to task.  After thinking about it for a time, I decided I would post the word FOCUS around my basement living/working space.  FOCUS is posted on my office door, on a cabinet in the train room, with another prominently posted on the very front of my Mac.   See photo.  

Let me say this:  Thinking about focus has allowed me to focus on what I do with my time more.  I really do think about what I’m doing.  Still, finding fun tasks to replace the more difficult necessary ones sounds a whole like a classic case of passive avoidance; you know, where the brain figures out something more fun to do that justifies the postponing of that more difficult stuff?   And I’m probably ADD.  Can’t be good, you know?  

As a retired guy, I find the problem of FOCUS more pronounced now than when I was a classroom teacher.  Back then, my day was set from the time the morning alarm rang until 3 pm.  After that, I had some choices.  But until then, I knew where I had to be and what I had to do.  No thoughts of sitting down to write a book back then.

These days on occasion, I hate to admit, I feel depressed. When the darkness strikes, I sleep a little longer, then just sit tight, hang on, and maybe take a walk.  On other days, when I have assigned tasks that get me out of the house, I feel a lot better.  Last week I felt exceptionally punk one day.  The next, when I had some work to do over at my daughter’s house, I felt much better.  

I suspect my limited progress on the book is a prime contributor to the depression.  The Hog Island history project has been with me for years now.  I truly love the subject.  I do.    

It’s just that the project seems so big and so important and, well, so beyond me.  Lots has been written about Mabel Loomis Todd and Millicent Todd Bingham and I should think every literary historian worth her or his salt has an opinion about both.  Now I come along to add some heretofore un-focused-on stories about the family.  It needs to be right.  I want it to be perfect.  I want people to like it.  And it scares me to death. 

Still, I am drawn to the Hog Island project and feel that FOCUS is the biggest part of an equation for me that will see some significant environmental history about the place reach some kind of publication.  I know that.  I have to continue with the reading, the organization, the writing, and trust that all will fall together.  I know it will.  I know that. 

It still scares the bejeebers out of me.  

Today’s elder idea:   A prayer from an unworthy pilgrim:

Spirit of the Universe, help me focus on my writing.