breakfast went okay and attention problems
My father and I go out to breakfast once a week. we've been doing this for six or seven years now. I'm an adult by the way. very much one. with a wife, kids, and a house. it's something we do because he thinks it might help to make up for him being absent when I was a kid. It doesn't, but one only gets one family I suppose.
typically, when we have breakfast at the diner there's a pair of gentlemen who sit one table away whose conversation is typically the cause of my loss of focus and concentration. Today, only one of the two was there, I only lost focus once when the waitress was taking his order.
I've been trying to manage this attention/focus problem for a while now. I more or less lived without realizing I had one for a very, very long time. I had a glass shattering moment when an acquaintance noticed a few years ago that I tend to walk away from conversations without acknowledging that I'm going to do so and seemingly without necessarily appearing like I know I'm going to do so. after that I've realized that I often find myself alighting from one task or thing to the next without wanting to or completing the thing I was doing. For example, I started this blog post in the middle of writing an email to someone. I then stopped writing that email to fix a few odds and ends around the office. then I started cleaning. wrote more of this post. forgot about the email. cleaned more. saw the unsent email, got frustrated that Ihadn't actually sent the blasted thing. then found myself checking my social media and reading the news, forgetting about the email again, taking a few phone calls, eating an apple with peanut butter, installing some software on a server, testing that server, sending the damn email finally, and writing a little more. not on purpose or anything. that's just what happened and I really don't care for it.
I'm trying to work on focusing on one thing at a time. I even printed out a work mantra or "slow down. make a plan. do one thing at a time" and hung it in my office, where I look at it and read it and think about it. it doesn't work, but I'm going to keep trying.