Distractions

One really awesome perk to my job is access to the Library of Congress.

Wait, before I get into that, let me say, I've alluded to my job a few times and there are a handful of people who sorta know what I do. Lots of people know I live in DC, so some have probably put 3 and 7 together. I don't discuss my job because it could cause me issues. However, I'm leaving here in about 60+ days. At that point, I'll be glad to share what I've done for the last 2 years. Back to the post...

Whenever I hear about a book I'd like to read, I just request it and it's delivered to me ASAP. It's pretty awesome.

A few moments ago, I got a new delivery. A book that, actually, I'd forgotten I had requested. Once I crack that book open this evening, as I know I will, I will be reading 5 books simultaneously. Why?

Right now I have 7 tabs open in IE and 2 open in Firefox. Most of them are blog posts/articles I want to read. Why?

Earlier I had 3-4 word documents open. All of them work related but none of them related to each other Why?

Rarely do I sit down to write a blog post and do so in one fell swoop. Perhaps that's normal for average blog writers (those of us who don't do this for our paychecks), but I think it's yet another sign of what I do to myself. In just the time I've written these few paragraphs, I've checked out a game my alma mater is playing in baseball, read some emails, responded to some text messages. Nothing important and maybe not even more important than this post. Definitely distractors, though.

I'm always distracting myself. I can remember in high school spending my evenings watching tv, writing papers, talking on AIM and the phone, all simultaneously. I made great grades. Just earlier this week I had a conversation with a friend where I told her I feel like I have to multitask to get anything done. She told me that's just what I tell myself.

I think that it's not just what I tell myself, but rather just what I've always done. To the point that maybe I can't accomplish things without multitasking. Sorta like how a person eventually becomes legitimately addicted to something. A long-time heroin user will tell you that it was fun at first but now they use to avoid being sick. They almost literally can't function without it.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not terrible that I'm reading 5 books at once, can't write a blog post without checking twitter 20 times or that from time to time I talk on the phone while I'm reading a super important article. But I think this self-distracting thing goes deeper than tasks I have to complete.

A long time ago, I noticed that the more I focused on others the less I had to focus on self.

To be continued..."