Benefits of Shifting our Attention

A missive in which I do everything except write.

10 a.m. Friday on an October morning. Three minutes ago, while I was brewing my coffee, groggy after waking early for morning pages, charging my Reiki box, and falling back to sleep, it finally washed over me: Friday vibes.

I love Friday vibes.

Friday vibes are easeful, open, even chatty later in the day. They’re one of the few highlights the 40-hour work week has given us, in my humble opinion.

I take my coffee outside. It’s chilly now 40, 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and too cold to work, but I’ve been sitting in a chair at the unlit fire pit where I can put my feet flat on a large rock. I have always struggled to be comfortable in a chair with my feet on the ground.

It’s overcast. Lina goes off hoping to find more tomatoes my father unthinkingly threw out into the trees for whatever animals or for ‘composting’ and she upsets a squirrel high up in a tree. A squirrel she can’t even see, but she looks around anyway. The squirrels and the crows are the only wildlife left.

At least the only wildlife left that makes noise. I saw some grouse on the ground while walking the other day, but it’s grouse hunting so they’re keeping a low profile. I also saw the remains (i.e., feathers and feathers) of another bird on my walk. There was an attempt to eat the bird on two different stumps as the feathers lay around them. Or that’s just where the fight happened.

Was it the neighbor cat who comes over and leaves bunnies and animal tails for us, or was it the bigger wild cat Dad says he sees every now and again? I’ll never know.

My coffee is delicious but I fear that lately I haven’t been savoring it as much as I’d like. It feels as if there is always something to do and indeed I have been doing a lot. I’ve been doing everything except writing.

the dishes

laundry

vacuumed my car

dropped off electronics recycling

finished sewing a fat yoga bolster

the dishes

laundry

finished crocheting a rectangle bag/basket

mark making

dishes

laundry

shredding old photos I swear will be useful in a project

started crocheting a sweater

Gilmore Girls marathon

socializing

far too much screen time to the point of disassociation

So I’ve closed all the browser tabs, unpinned every icon from my taskbar except Scrivener and Word, and I’ve put this damn machine in Airplane Mode while I write. Of course, I had to do all this before I actually started writing. And at least seven is the number of times I have wanted to turn off Airplane Mode and look something up, the exact temperature, for instance, in the last 30 minutes.

Honestly, I think this is quite good.

And again: I wanted to see if that e-ink laptop I covet and will not connect to the net at all, has gone into production (no). Maybe I should go analog and use a typewriter…

The sky is overcast. I love an overcast day, it’s easy on the eyes. The remaining yellow leaves still shimmer and glitter as the wind blows through them. I watch. I want to sit here forever watching the leaves, but as these words form, I know I must write before they slip away. Before I find something else pressing to do instead of write them.

Catherine Aird, British author, writes light-heartedly in a 2004 essay, “Living with Writers,” that she does everything else before writing. “…I usually write when there isn’t anything more interesting or pressing to do (never yet, anyway, having succeeded in being able to sort out the important from the urgent).” She’s “convinced that the imagination works better after leaving the desk rather than before coming to it…the brain seems to carry on working better when the hands are engaged in undemanding but necessary work.”

I find I get weighted down by what I should be doing (writing), struggle to do it, and then need a long break. Big reset. I need to pull all my attention and energy from even considering writing or what I’m doing with any particular project in order that I come back fresh and clear-headed. Things do get muddled. I get stuck on ideas. Stuck on projects. Living in loops that won’t allow me forward. My autonomic nervous system, though I’ve been tender with it these last some months, still feels some kind of way whenever I think about writing.

And it certainly feels some kind of way about the long and growing backlog of many, many half-finished and new project ideas both in writing and in fiber and bookbinding, mark making. Skills I want to practice. Objects I want to make. Things I feel I should be doing vs. things I’m not sure need to be done (unable to distinguish the ‘important from the urgent’).

Of course, literally picking up any project and making a bit of progress would feel better than not doing anything at all, but nonetheless, I get stuck here trying to choose the ‘best’ project to work on. The most important. And trying to impose some level of focus, which never works. I just filter through all the projects I have on the go over and over again while playing solitaire until I collapse from mental exhaustion.

So this awkward autumn break in which I did manage to clear some tasks from the list (regardless of the fact that there will always be tasks) feels like a win. At least I was doing something. And now I don’t need to vacuum my car for another four years!

—I’m still learning what my rhythms are and how to allow them without shame or guilt (maybe I always will be). When I’m in doing mode vs. contemplative mode. When I need to absorb information vs. when I need to digest and process and release. I’m sure that a lot of this has to do with the seasons and other energetic factors. Where are you at right now? Are you able to simply allow it, acknowledge it, and accept it? Work with the mood rather than against it even in small ways?

—Are you stuck on a project? Or maybe a number of projects? Is there anywhere else you can put your attention and completely forget about said projects but still feel accomplished?

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With gratitude,