Sunday September 11, 2022 // Post Bedtime
The past several years I’ve been plagued by a recurring problem. My attention is split between 50 different things at one time. My path forward is split by an infinite amount of forks in the road. Each one twists and turns towards an endgame that I haven’t defined.
In short, my focus is scattered. That’s life in a certain sense. We have a job, a kid, bills, a yard, a dog, a dishwasher that breaks, a car that needs gas, a driveway that needs to be shoveled, a cold, a mountain of clothes to fold, etc. We’re pulled and yanked like a Stretch Armstrong. Meditation and patience brings us back to our solid, stable form. However we’re left immobile. Incapable of moving forward meaningfully in any one particular direction.
I’ve spent countless nights with my brain thrashing on what I should or want to pay attention to. To give myself a singular focus – “let’s learn a language”, “let’s run a marathon”, “let’s become masters at ___ software”, “let’s learn to code”. Sometimes I’ll knuckle down and throw my hands up in success after choosing one. Only to stick with it for a couple days or weeks if I’m lucky. Most times? It’s a line in a to-do list that promptly gets ignored the next morning when the newest curveball gets thrown at me.
Why?
Life in 2022 as a working parent isn’t designed for you to tack on an extra “project” for your life. That’s a fact. It sucks. Legit. I still haven’t accepted that though so because I’m persistent AF and I’m still going to try.
I don’t have the answers on how to put the humpty dumpty pieces of my focus back together again. But I can bear down and try again.
That’s all. Nice little pep talk to myself on a Sunday night.
– Josh // Honing In
Related Reading: Non-Essential Life Projects & Being a Working Parent