The lure of distractions

I’m dealing with a lot of different distractions at the moment.

For me, they come in huge tidal waves, then end up being nothing later on. But dealing with them, brushing them off when they attack me at all sides, is something that I am coming to terms with. Namely, it’s that point of focus that I sometimes lack.

There are periods in which I am so focused, so selfish to what I want to do that it is uncanny how different I am when I am distracted. As if there was no focus, no selfishness to me at all. I’m all over the place in small periods.

Luck for me, as I mentioned, this happens in small periods. If it happened in large ones, I doubt if I could hold a page of content let alone a book together.

I will look back at those short periods of erratic behavior with awe. Damn, that was WAY too unimportant for me to be focused on. Look at all of the things I could have done, had I not worried about that.

And that’s where I’m at. Most of those things distracting me from writing are useless nonsense. They need to be compartmentalized in order to help me progress as a writer. It’s the application of that method of focus which I tend to lack, but have to reinforce on a weekly basis.

If I tell myself that I am going to write, I will plan out a good period of an hour or two hours where I refuse to do anything but write. On vomit drafts, this can be difficult because the guidelines are less for the expansion of notes. By the rewriting portion of draft two or draft three, with those guidelines, it becomes somewhat easier to sit and write for longer periods. I mention the word “somewhat” because there are exceptions.

And boy, as a writer, I have found them.

Those times in which your friend calls and talks for two hours on random issues or topics. Or you find yourself sitting around, thinking about nothing, but trying to get in the mood for writing. Or going to see to a movie which is not worth your money, then arriving back home to write, only to find that you are too tired to sit down and bang out that story.

These are some of the distractions which pull me off focus.

Others include work related nonsense which I bring home with me and never gets solved anyway.

These distractions haunt me. They come at different times even when I am ready to sit down and write. Periods in which I’ve sat at the computer, convinced myself of spacing out writing time, and still something takes me off course.

But I do remind myself that these distractions come as part of a larger choice. It’s something which I remind myself of daily. Do I want to be a writer bad enough?

Do I want to be a full-time writer someday or am I thrilled to not be and to serve only as a reminder to others of what could have been?

That fear resides deeper than any distraction can. It makes me sit back and think. I don’t want to be that guy who could have made it. I want to be the example of the guy who did make it.

Therefore, my focus has to continue to be primed.