the art of distraction

Y’all know that I have EDD (Easily Distracted Disorder).  This is a new “disease” I discovered.  I am not so sure that it is recognized by any medical body yet, but it should be.  Some people blame their lack of productivity on getting distracted.  There is a real disease called ADD, but I don’t have that.  That is caused by a different wiring pattern than what some other people have.  EDD is as much an art form as as a disorder.  It takes a lot of time and effort to distract oneself from being productive.

Surfing the Internet is one of the more common ways of practicing distraction.  Someone who is a real artist can start out doing real work and end up looking at pictures of 19th Century wedding practices from the Far East.  Just saying.  Sometimes I am so motivated to work that I can’t distract myself.  I hate it when that happens.  Just today, I tried to get distracted, but found myself painting and fixing baseboards and caulking cracks in the ceiling tiles.  What a waste of good distracted time.

Sometimes, though, distractions are boring.  I try to read for while every night before bed.  I used to love reading a good romantic novel like World War Z or one of the Jesse Stone books.  Now I find them all to be the same.  Boy meets corpse, boy finds murderer, boy shoots killer (or killer shoots boy), boy ends up in hospital, nurse takes boys home for unnamed adult alone time.  I look for books that are just stories, but almost all the ones I see, especially the free ones, involve some sort of amateur sleuth finding the perpetrator of some global conspiracy to corner the market in Malted Milk Balls.  Okay, maybe not that, but you get the picture.

I want a story that is just about real people living real lives.  No zombies, no vampires, no faeries (yes, that is spelled correctly), no killing, no sex (well maybe some sex).  I want a book where the ending isn’t “I got tired of writing, so I’m just going to tag on this predictable ending so I can have a beer” kind of ending,  Books should be unexpected.  I know, I do like a good Clive Cussler story, but just once could Dirk Pitt be wrong and not nail the bad ocean wrecking crazy just in the nick of time.  Sometimes I want a book that when I’m done with it, I want to be surprised and awed and just blown away by the ending.  I want to be distracted by it.

You see, the way I figure it, if a distraction is that good, it is an art form.  I have sat up way past bed time to finish a few books.  Not often, mind you, but once in a while.  Although sometimes I want to savor a book and NOT finish it all in one sitting.  There are some books that I read over and over.  I can savor the writing of a book I’ve already read.  I can allow the story of Bilbo Baggins to flow along like a slow lazy Hobbit walk.  I can saunter along with Atticus Finch and feel the sweat run down my back as he stands in that hot courtroom.  I can be distracted more easily because I’m not intent on finding out the ending, I already know how it ends and now I can take my time with all the little details I missed the first time.

I wrote some time back about purposeful idleness, that is what I want being distracted to be, idleness with a purpose..  I want to allow my self to sit in the shade and be a part of my world without allowing the real distraction of paint not finished or drywall not patched or barnacles not scraped off the boat to intrude.  I want to be an artist of distraction.  I want to be distracted by the raptor birds flying overhead.  I want to be distracted by the sound the wind makes in the palms.  I want to be distracted by the fish jumping in the canals.  I want to be easily distracted by the things that matter.  Work will always be there.  The dirty dishes will still be there later.  The laundry will still be undone in the morning.  But I choose to be distracted by the real world that flows all around us unnoticed, except by we who are easily distracted.

Practice the art of distraction some today, you’ll be glad you did.  See y’all later.