unfocused monday

oh my, did i lack focus today. even right now, as i'm trying to write this, i'm glancing through pinterest on my laptop as my fingers rest on the keyboard of my big computer. maybe it was a monday thing. maybe it was that my to-do list is of daunting proportions. maybe it was because i didn't shower, but just got dressed and rushed off to my first appointment. it wasn't a kind of you-shouldn't-go-out-in-public-stinky-woman lack of a shower, it was more of a that-would-have-really-cleared-your-mind kind of need for a shower. after my appointment (where i presented a good picture of being on top of things) i was so unfocused, i drove a strange backroads route home, which took me past a dairy where they have a cheese store. i wandered in and bought a huge block of havarti. not planned. then i got back in the car and noticed a nursery and popped in to see if they had any artichokes. they did and i also bought wormwood (tho' i didn't know that's what it was at the time) it's called malurt in danish and has absinthe in its latin name, so i thought "score." i also picked up a chili plant, some lovage, tarragon and sage. also rather unfocused. i stopped by the store to pick up milk and cat litter. i came out with nectarines, crackers, creme fraiche and toilet paper. no milk. no cat litter. unfocused, i tell you. i picked up the child and two of her friends. they ate some nectarines. we went home. we walked in the door and i was reminded of our need for cat litter. so i went to the feed store to buy cat food. i came home with bunny food and chicken food as well. i decided to go to another grocery store, where i would surely remember milk and cat litter, plus it was close to the library, where i needed to pick up a book i ordered. i got there and didn't have my phone with me, where the number of my reservation was, so i had to look at two entire shelves of books for a title that looked like i might have ordered it. it turrned out to be bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope: reflections, applications and perspectives (apparently this lack of focus thing has been going on longer than i thought). this time, i left the store with milk, sugar, cream, flour, brown sugar, 4 pears, 4 apples and 2 bananas. and again, no cat litter. by this time, i was getting good at forgetting the cat litter (*silver lining*). home again, where i tried to settle in to work. but a restlessness came over me and i couldn't sit still. i went out and planted the herbs and the chili. and gathered a basket of elderflowers to make cordial. that made me feel slightly less restless, but then it was really time to do some work. so i settled in at my desk and then someone came to the door. it involved a lengthy chat and a wander in the yard. as if i needed to wander. and then it was time to make dinner. and husband came home and had a headache, so he had a little lie down. when dinner was ready, i couldn't find anyone, even tho' i called and called. so i ate by myself while i stared at my to-do list with a creeping sense of doom. after dinner, the sun had come out, and husband's headache was better, so we had to take a walk. that helped. at least with the restlessness. but i still only got about 3 hours of work done, when it should have been more like ten. let's hope tomorrow is a little more focused. and that i remember the cat litter.

it's all about focus

sometimes all of the possibilities before me leave me feeling listless and unable to focus. with so many different things to focus on, i tend not to focus at all, but wander from one to the other, without really finishing or exploring any of them to their fullest. this is true of sewing projects, business ideas, gardens (i still haven't planted that basil in the greenhouse), bread left baking in the oven (i could go on). 

a friend of mine is using this whole week to get her focus and her priorities straight and sharing the whole process on her blog. (it's in danish, apologies to my largely english-speaking audience).  and while i find it a little new agey (don't get me wrong, i had a new age phase in the late 80s in southern california, as one does, and i loved it fully then, but i've moved on), however, i think the idea is a good one. to really dig in and figure out what the hell it is that makes you tick. (and by you i mean me.)

i suppose everyone goes through this, a midlife crisis of sorts, where you wonder if you're living the right life and if you've focused on the right things and whether what you've done matters. and i suppose the answer is always that sometimes you did and sometimes you didn't. and that sometimes it's hard to tell when you're in the middle of it all.

all you can really hope is that you can somehow tune in to what it is that makes you tick. and then focus on that.

a need for focus

kristina suggested that we do a week of blurry shots on across ø/öresund. she's so good at finding ways to get out of the doldrums brought on by a too-long and too-slowly-waning winter (in fact, she's been doing a whole series on it on her blog of late). and it's interesting how difficult i found it yesterday to go out with my lens on manual focus and allow myself to purposely take unfocused shots. of course i take shots all the time that aren't perfectly focused, but to do so intentionally is something different. at first, i had to also take every shot focused as well as the unfocused one and then i realized that was arguably a symptom of my growing obsessive compulsive disorder (put the pens back in color order, people), and so i took a whole bunch of totally unfocused shots and didn't allow myself to take a focused companion. really weird how difficult and awkward it felt at first. like any new thing, i suppose. but it got a little bit easier as i went along.

and it's interesting how this little assignment underlines exactly how i'm feeling this week - unfocused. i have so much to do that it's really quite silly. i think it's the waiting. we still don't know whether they will accept our offer (i guess the dog sled has not made it to the canadian arctic circle to ask the one party as of yet) on the house and husband's still waiting to see the nitty gritty details of his two job offers. and waiting makes you unfocused. there's so much i could and should be doing, but instead, i spend hours making mosaics of my flickr faves, drooling over heather's home on apartment therapy and stirring up a mushroom and fennel risotto. yeah, i got some laundry done, but once it's in, it requires little from me but the switch from washer to dryer. i could have been packing books or sorting out the attic, but i didn't. and i'm sure that later, when i'm pressed for time, i'll regret it.

spud and bee and blanca got together in london for mini blog camp on sunday and they had a discussion of life plans. blanca has one. spud and bee do not. i think a little bit that my lack of focus is because the life plan of moving to a farm with space for a large garden and a couple of horses that we developed over the past year is actually starting to come true. at least on the meta-level, of course, the details are to be worked out and acted upon. but once you fulfill your life plan, what's the next step? you need a new life plan to replace the old one that came true. i think the picture above is the perfect metaphor for how i feel right now. some bits in focus and some not so much. i need to get those focused bits out of the way and zero in on the fuzzy ones, developing them further. and it leaves me feeling restless and impatient.