Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing
And another thing. It just hit me a few minutes ago when I was in the study
repainting the red walls a redder red--a project that I estimate will take me
approximately 21 painting hours since there also are 28 bookshelves and the
back of each will need three coats since red paint streaks so badly--that the
way we flit around from topic to topic here (and at our real breakfast table)
is indicative of a bigger problem in how we live our lives. We're so
fragmented. My attention, at any given moment, is divided among so many
competing thoughts that it makes my teeth ache. An example: This morning after
you left for work, I was playing with the baby on the couch and she was
wiggling her fingers in the air in a way she considered menacing as she
shrieked, "I am the dinosaur. ROARRRRR. The dinosaur is scaring Mommy!" This
was perhaps the cutest sight I have ever witnessed in my life. But even as I
was saying, "Help, save me from the dinosaur," I was simultaneously thinking:
How am I going to wrap up that column today, the kicker I have stinks; should I
roast a chicken for dinner or not because it's not worth it unless I go get the
good chicken and that's at a butcher store 20 minutes away, and if waste 40
minutes going to a butcher store, how many of those red shelves will I be able
to paint today; did I forget to give Zoe that permission slip she needed this
morning; is my skin starting to look old; do I hear the dog throwing up a sock
in the kitchen; maybe I should just end the piece by referring back to the
lead, but then I always do that so ...
A certain percentage of these thoughts were perhaps valid. If I considered
them in an appropriate time and place. But the baby is only going to be this
cute and want to play dinosaur for about 10 seconds before she grows up enough
to get mean and criticize my hair like the others. So why am I wasting the
millisecond? This used to be called multi-tasking and be considered a skill.
Even earlier, it was called juggling. And I used to envy people who kept all
the balls in the air. I thought they got more out of life because they did
more. But now I don't know. It's been so long since I fully concentrated on one
idea or one task or one anything that my attention span has contracted to be
about as long as ... well, as long as it takes to paint the backs of three
bookshelves. And these, as you know, are not big bookshelves.
