Distracted and scattered

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I’m distracted right now (meaning recent weeks through this very minute). I’m scattered and forgetful and every waking hour of my day is broken into fragments of working on or thinking about at least 10 things at a time. I’m always like this, but I’ve been REALLY like this of late. I can’t concentrate, I’m looking at my phone every five gosh-dang minutes, and I cannot keep my mind on a single task or occupation without thinking about what I need to do next or what I should be doing instead. And every day, I’m asking myself the same question: What is wrong with me? What is wrong with my brain? 

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I was home working one day last week, and spent the morning working on a last-minute project with a short turnaround time. This is actually my favorite kind of project. The panic keeps me focused. I worked steadily, occasionally checking the clock, and by 10:55, I had a draft ready to show at an 11:00 check-in meeting. Everyone was happy, and so I was happy too. I took a lunch break at 11:45 and after eating some leftovers (leftovers for lunch is one of my favorite WFH perks and yes I know I can bring leftovers to work and I do that but it’s not the same), I decided to spend 30 minutes on housework, and my focus fell to pieces. 

There was laundry in the dryer, which had just finished drying. I knew this thanks to the 30 seconds of  “Die Forelle” that the dryer plays every time it finishes a cycle. I do wish that all of my appliances would shut up. But I digress. 

I think I folded maybe 2 t-shirts and a towel or something, when the kitchen counter caught my peripheral vision. There’s too much mail piled up there, I thought. Time to sort through it. Time to separate the wheat from the chaff. I started doing that and almost finished and then saw that some jerk had left a coffee cup on the counter NEXT to the sink. How hard would it be, I thought, to put that cup IN the sink, or in the dishwasher? How hard would it be to just wash it? Then I noticed that it was my cup. I’m the jerk. I’m the problem. It’s me.  I stopped to wash the cup, after putting away the handful of plates and mugs that had been drying on the rack, and then I remembered the laundry. I started toward the dryer but noticed that I hadn’t quite finished dealing with the mail, so I did that and then started toward the dryer again. 

I folded and stacked shirts and towels and socks until I was almost finished. Then I noticed the debris on the laundry room floor, which turned out to be remnants of some tissues that had gone through the laundry in some jerk’s pockets. Yes, the jerk was me again but is that relevant here? Is that germane to the issue we’re discussing? Does that have anything to do with the topic of this post? 

What is the topic of this post? What are we even talking about? 

It would have been smart to just finish the laundry and then sweep up the lint and tissue debris but having noticed that mess on the floor I had to do something about it immediately. Immediately! So I swept the laundry room and then finished folding the last few items. By now, 30 minutes had passed and I needed to get back to work. In an uncharacteristic move, I left the folded laundry in its neat piles on the dryer, because if I’d gone into any of the bedrooms to put clothes away, I’d have noticed something amiss, and I’d have ended up on my hands and knees cleaning baseboards or dusting furniture or organizing a sock drawer. 

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The afternoon proceeded apace, as afternoons tend to do. I do my best work in the afternoon, between about 1 and 5 PM. My mornings are spent responding to emails and making lists and crossing small items off existing lists, and posting stuff on various social media accounts. I always try to schedule meetings in the morning, too, because I might as well use the unproductive hours on unproductive pursuits. I can concentrate in the afternoon, and so that’s when I can do the kind of complex and demanding work that requires focus and creativity. Afternoons go by very quickly. 

But once the afternoon is over, so is the period of focus and concentration, and I’m back to my scattered and distracted self. At 5:15 or so, I decided to stop working and start making dinner. Making dinner is not my favorite thing to do and so I’m very susceptible to side tracks and diversions when I’m thinking about planning to prepare to make dinner. I started with putting away the laundry that had spent the afternoon resting on the dryer. 

Yes, you predicted correctly. I did exactly what I knew I would do, which was to sidetrack myself into closet organization and drawer straightening and baseboard dusting, frittering away 30 minutes during which dinner could have been cooking merrily away and instead the ingredients remained trapped in the refrigerator while I sorted socks and separated t-shirts into keep and donate piles. 

I did finally cook dinner, a simple stir fry of chicken and vegetables over rice. It was delicious. 

Later, I was falling asleep watching hockey, so I went to bed. And there it was on my bed - the pile of laundry that I had carried to the bedroom at 5:15. I put it away, resisting the urge to do some reorganization work in my closet and drawers, and finally climbed in under the covers. 

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I wrote all of this about a week ago, and I’m still a scatter-brained mess. I’m struggling to focus, and I’m making stupid mistakes. I drove home from work on Monday night and at 7:15 on Tuesday morning (Tuesday is a telework day), I realized that I had left my computer on my desk in my office. How was it possible for me to walk all the way across campus to my car without wondering why my tote bag was so light? I’m looking absentmindedly at my phone wondering just why I had picked it up in the first place, and I’m wandering in and out of rooms and forgetting completely what I needed to do in those rooms, and I’m waking up at all hours of the night and trying not to look at the news. But it’s a losing battle and will be a losing battle until at least November 6 and possibly beyond. I hope not on the “beyond” part, but I’m afraid we’re in for a shit show next week no matter what. Maybe I’ll start on a new project. It’ll distract me.