Today’s been a nice day, and I have to admit it was spent mostly discovering just how gluttonous I can be. That wasn’t actually the plan when I woke up, by the way. There was no conscious thought process that went, “Wonder how much food I can stuff down my face-hole before I need to trundle off to some distant cave and go into a deep hibernation”.

There was, however, a very nice lunch outing with my sister, step-father, mother, and the Grandmooses (grandparents on my father’s side of the family).

I feel like I could sleep for a couple weeks, but my writing schedule doesn’t permit such snoozing.

Day Eighteen – Focusing too much and accomplishing too little

I can be pretty focused at times, believe it or not. It’s rare, and usually leaves me a little surprised. Such creative tunnel-vision is usually a pretty good thing, as it has gotten me through plenty of projects (for college or otherwise) on time. In the case of school-related things, oftentimes it happened the day before a paper was due.

There’s clear and definite downsides to this focus. I’ve been churning out daily posts for One Hundred Days of Blogging, but not letting myself get to any creative writing or other projects. One one hand: hooray, I’m blogging very regularly. On the other hand: boo, I’ve not been writing very much otherwise. It becomes a weird, frustrating balancing act with my day-job, other personal obligations, and other leisure activities. Since I don’t believe I’ve admitted it on here yet: I’ve resurrected my WoW account. I feel no shame in this fact (I will forever be Kazadiel, the shittiest Warlock to ever kill things in Azeroth).

I do not have a brain fit for multitasking. That’s not to say I’m dumb (although I can be a touch obtuse from time to time) so much as merely acknowledging I’m better off when my attention is devoted to one task. My biggest problem isn’t trying to multitask, though. It’s when I get distracted by another something that needs my attention. My cleaning process from this past week, for instance, is a good example of that. I would be working on cleaning out the cabinets, and then I’d notice a dirty spot on the counter. I’d start scrubbing down the counters and then notice something else. And so on. I’m quick to bounce between multiple things at once, which probably accounts for why my posts take a little longer when made from my computers (I’m on my family’s home PC presently, free of most distraction and wondering why there’s a piece of electrical tape over the webcam). The writing process on Aperture Surface involves Microsoft Word, the Twitter app, the Facebook app, Facebook’s messenger service, my e-mail app (which is connected to my three Gmail accounts), and the occasional glance at the television. Can’t forget my phone, either. Good lord.

What I think I’m getting at here, since I’m still admittedly feeling like a great beast who is thoroughly prepared for a long winter’s nap, is that I need to get back to writing short stories or working on my novel projects while getting this done. And maybe I should learn to juggle better, while I’m at it (I don’t mean that in the literal sense, although this sentence started out with that intention for the sake of snarkiness).

I dare say there’s not much else to say on the subject, as I’m far from an expert on finding the right balance of focus on one thing versus focus on side-projects. There’s also the small matter of company arriving, and me wanting to not be an entirely rude, anti-social computer-hermit while they’re here.

Eighty-two days remaining.

PS: Today’s post was sponsored in part by parenthetical asides, which are my second favorite kind of asides. First place goes to a liberal use of dash-separated appositive phrases.