Shortening of Time, Piecemeal Writing and Tired Hands...
Lately, it seems like I have taken to doing most of my writing in little tiny bits.
What I mean by that, is that I tend to sit down and just write a few sentences because I have an idea, and then I'll walk away again and do something else. Maybe an hour or two later I'll have an additional idea so I'll sit down and write a paragraph. And then I'll walk away again. And so on, and so forth.
Eventually, evening rolls around and I make an attempt to assemble the day's thoughts into something cohesive. Of course the problem is that much of the time I don't end up with anything cohesive.
And that means we find ourselves back in the land of realizing that I just have a short little span of attention!
That said, the world increasingly feels like it is made up of lots of tiny little bits, kind of like my writing. For example, I can't remember the last time I had a significant contiguous block of time to do anything with; to just stay focused.
The other day I was listening to a podcast and the person being interviewed was a efficiency and productivity specialist and he was pointing out that our lives have so many distractions in them these days that it actually takes a considerable amount of discipline to just sit down and focus on a single thing.
Seems like there are always notifications, or incoming texts, or phone calls or something else that takes our attention away from what we're actually trying to focus on and it's an almost never-ending barrage.
Although I do know that I have a short little span of attention, I do also wish there were fewer distractions... particularly when I finally get to the point where I know I have to really work at getting something finished by a deadline. But usually I have no such luck!
I suppose one of the things that sometimes disturbs me about all these distractions is that it feels more and more like we humans are living lives designed to accommodate the technology around us, rather than vice versa.
Not meaning to sound all weird and conspiracy theorist about it, but it's more like we're accommodating the machines than the machines are accommodating us! even though they are being show to us as ostensible time savers.
Of course, the machines aren't actually doing anything much by themselves yet, and maybe that's an inappropriate characterization.
But they are being programmed in such a way as to set up this veritable storm of distractions that we have to keep up with and then we end up feeling bad about ourselves because we can't concentrate and we can't get any significant amount of work done in a continuous stream.
Then again, maybe I'm just getting old and not able to concentrate as well as I once was!
Meanwhile, I spent much of my Saturday outside, pulling weeds. Interesting how you get to "notice" your body when you repeatedly use a movement you don't usually use. As I sat down to organize this post, I noticed how tired and sore my fingers are, right now!
But don't get me wrong, I do love my gardening... It's a great meditation!
Thanks for reading, and have a great Memorial Day weekend!
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Created at 2023-05-28 00:42 PST
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