focus.
I feel keenly the bustle of outdoors, the sudden crush at lunch when office workers descend in hoardes on the sidewalk. I listen for the sirens as they wail at full volume, and the resulting horns from the traffic jams they leave in their wake. The office is quiet, but not quiet enough; the hum of a printer churning out pressed white sheets, the gentle tap of keys and someone scribbles down an important scientific discovery. It all swims around in my head, detracting from the solitary, blinking cursor on my screen.
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I have always been susceptible to distraction, always prone to a short attention span, worsened by scrolling on my phone and watching the minutes tick away until lunchtime. I am at my least focused when a half-finished book sits in my bag, tucked away after the long commute in, singing its siren call of longing. I itch to turn the pages, to find out how the story ends, to sink into a reality that bears no resemblence to the low murmur of the office.
It wouldn’t mater so much, the concentration, if I wasn’t so fixed on productivity. Instead, the list of things to be done extends beyond into the distance, a mountain I cannot climb unless I can convince myself to put one foot in front of the other. And the mountain is awesome, its shadow all-encompassing. It is made of the dregs of the unfinished manuscript of my book, of the pile of scientific journals I have yet to read for a particular project, of the miles of training I still have to do for the marathon in 6 weeks. It is heaped with laundry and dirty dishes, the passport that needs renewing, the birthday gifts that need buying, the plane tickets that need booking.
Instead, I turn away from the looming structure, walk onward beyond the shade. I look out at the vastness of landscape that I have conquered before, and I bask in the light of the sun. The climb is waiting. But I think it might be okay if it doesn’t get done today.
