I’ve always envied people with overwhelming powers of focus.
I wish I could just write on my novel and not think about anything else – but that’s not me.
I’ve probably pursued twenty different tasks this Sunday morning. Some are routine like showering, exercising, washing clothes, eating breakfast, and doing the dishes, but others are just distractions, like learning how to create CBR files of science fiction book covers, looking for neat hi-rez Ace Book covers from the 1960s, organizing my playlists on Rdio, listening to a lecture about iPython, reading Jason Sanford’s Medium collection on Sci-Fi Strange, reading a Stanislaw Lem short story, listening to Difficult Men on audio, creating a poll for the science fiction book club, promoting John’s Background Switcher in an email, playing with my desktop photo collection, talking on the phone with Janis and Susan, laying on the couch imagining a science fiction story, – or writing this blog post.
And that’s only the distractions I remember at the moment for the last few hours.
Here I am distracted by a photo from my desktop of Kay Frances with blonde hair – normally she’s always black headed. Every minute my background switcher shows me dozens of photos. Most are hidden under the many program windows I have open on my main monitor, but I like to have my second monitor free just to entice me with alluring visuals. 
And while my eyes are dazzled with images from nature, movies, book covers, fine art, record covers, etc., my ears are blasted with songs. All of which explains why I don’t work on my novel. Instead of thinking how to give up all my distractions, I keep thinking of ways to organize them so I can take in even more input at once. I’m like the little robot.
Am I crazy? Or maybe I’m the most skilled procrastinator in the universe. I guess that’s a distinction of sorts.
If I could only sit in a windowless white room containing a single desk and chair, with a pad of white paper and a single pen, and focus my mind for just one hour a day. I could conquer the world. Or at least write a short story.
JWH 2/2/14
