Focus

I lack focus and always have, in just the same way that I lack ambition. I feel like I'm spinning plates and so many things need my attention at once and the big one, I don't know where I'm going in my life. There's no endgame for me in my career. I am not working towards anything more than something I am good at, that I enjoy and a high enough wage to enjoy life comfortably in a financially motivated world with a little more materialistic mind than I'd like to admit.

I started my new job bright and early Monday morning and I have to physically focus my mind on acquiring and learning as much as I can, soaking in all of the information and re-directing that focus and new knowledge into the application of the task at hand. I work as a digital marketer and there are a lot of facets to the company I work for under the digital marketing umbrella - SEO, PPC, CRO, web design, PR and within those layers and layers of techniques, pitches, technical information and the correct processes to achieve the required (and preferred) results. Where do I want to go in this career? I don't know. I'd love to still be with the ever-expanding company I'm with now and experience the growth from within but who knows? This is a problem for me.

You see, I'm a planner. I plan everything from coffee dates to trips away and my future. I know exactly where I need to be and when, if I'm late or someone else is late I go a little bit crazy in my own head and if there are no plans or those plans change? Well, I can have a meltdown. I live by lists and task sheets, I have a schedule and I stick to it and spontaneity is barely even in my vocabulary. I can do spontaneity but I do not do it well. You know if you were to try to ice skate and you've never done it before so you're tentative, feeling a little brave and suddenly you're on the floor? Slow that down. Those facial expressions, flailing arms and bandy legs? That's a visual representation of how I feel in the midst of spontaneity.

The problem is that when you're a planner and busy a lack of focus is such a hinderance. I am jam packed week days from 6am until at least 8pm, oftentimes later. I'll tweet and Instagram my way through my day but there is always something - if not my family then work, if not work then side projects, if not side projects it's running the admin in the house, if it's not admin it's cleaning and so on and so forth until the thought of more things to do leaves me screaming inside a prison I built myself.

But, here's news: I built the prison myself and it built up so slowly I can't remember ever starting, right? So I figure I would have been smart enough to build a way out so I am trying to become more focused. I'm developing techniques to busy my mind while I do this such as listening to classical instrumentals while reading. Some may find this distracting but I find it occupies the part of my mind that is always whirring and quietens it down enough for me to read word by word, sentence by sentence and absorb what I need to. Scribbling or jotting down notes while listening to a video or reading also works. It's these little things that are giving me hope that while I may not become a spontaneous person overnight (or ever) I can learn to refocus and blur out those edges just a little.

And what of ambition? I achieve the goals I set myself and I believe when something comes up that I feel I can spend my time dedicated to getting to that I will. Until then....back to work.