Subtle Bluntness

I sat down today to do another post for NaBloWriMo. Lately, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft again, because of some zombie-related fun they’ve had tied into their forthcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Basically, zombies are everywhere in Azeroth, you can kill them for cash and prizes, and you’ll read more about that tomorrow at Den of Geek.

I can’t even get into my post because I’m so easily distracted.

Let’s try this again.

I sat down today to do a post for NaBloWriMo, got a couple of paragraphs into it, and then realized that it was going to be A) way too long for a normal blog post and B) completely not of interest to anyone reading this blog who doesn’t dork out about zombies or video games. Even the people who fall into category B won’t want to read 1000 words on an event in a game they might not have ever played, so I figured it would work best as a post over at Den of Geek.

This happens to me constantly. I sit down to do one thing, get sidetracked, and end up with something completely different from what I was trying to do. Sometimes it works out well and I get something useful for one of my many, many blogs. Other times, it goes into the folder on my hard drive reserved for half-baked ideas, story sketches, and miscellanea that I optimistically call my ’stuff to be finished’ folder. Nothing in that folder ever gets finished, nor will it ever get finished.

Why is this? Is this simply a reflection of the fact that I’ve got way too many interests and entirely too many blogs spread out throughout the aether? Is my having blogs plural a reflection of the fact that I can’t focus on anything that isn’t shiny or on fire for longer than 5 minutes? Is it also related to the fact that I love complex, awkward sentences?

This is such a common refrain in my life that it suggests that perhaps I have a touch of what the kids call ADD. It seems cliché for me to even suggest that, given that everyone and their mother seems to think they have it, but the proof is in the pudding.

When I was in high school, I had to write down things in my planner or I’d forget them. In college, I nearly failed the lab part of a class because I forgot about the final exam period. The only way I could make it through my papers was to either wait until the very last minute (we’re talking the night before or the morning of the due date) or to have a couple of adult beverages and slow my brain down a bit. Even now, if someone doesn’t remind me that there’s a concert on X date that I want to go to, or I made plans with Y group of friends to do Z, I’ll forget about it. Hell, I’ll wander away from the computer in the middle of doing something or chatting or writing now and not come back for hours at a time. Usually when I am at the computer, I’m doing no less than five things at once. (For example, right now I’ve got the football game on, MST3K on my laptop, I’m writing this post, I’m browsing the web and reading other blog posts [I have six tabs open], and I’m doing laundry.)

Is it a bad thing? Probably. I mean, I’d get a lot more stuff done if I could concentrate on whatever it was I was doing at the time. Then again, I probably wouldn’t be as well rounded as I am if I didn’t have so many interests and so little ability to focus.

One of things I’d like to do one of these days is get some follow-through. We’ll see. I guess finishing this post is a good start.

Edit:  Hey, I’m not alone.

Tags: AD&D, articles, Blog Business, blogging, distractions, the muse, writing

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