Too Focused
Focusing on just a few things makes everything else blur.
I used to be persistent and stubborn. Then I went to college and learned the true meaning of persistence. Trying to graduate in four years was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done. It was almost non-stop day in and day out of struggling to get good grades on assignments I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around before they were due. It was jumping through academic hoops to prove I was learning something each midterm. It was spending hour after hour on challenging projects that I enjoyed. It was skipping breakfast or eating lunch at 3pm because I was too busy to eat it at “lunch time.”
The stress and the busyness created a time dilation effect for me. I would be so focused on what I had to work on, that I rarely realized how long I’d been working until my calendar alerts told me it was time to go to class. Or my stomach announced it was long overdue for a meal. This habit is something I carried over immediately after graduation day.
Fast forward a year to today. An average day involves me getting to work, going to meetings, programming, coordinating with other people who are also programming. I then finish breakfast at 10:30 am because I bring it with me to eat at work, but usually forget to eat it the minute I get in. At 12pm I start to think about lunch, but by that point I’m done talking to people because they’re all at lunch and I’m on a roll with whatever I was programming on. After eating at my desk, or taking a break to eat in the cafeteria (usually at 1pm) I repeat the process I listed above until 5pm. But that’s assuming I’m not on a roll again. Otherwise I’ll stay 30–90 minutes past five.
Now that was work. Once I am home I have time to work on whatever I want. Let’s see, what shall I do? In Evernote I have 29 book/short story, film, website, and video game ideas filed away. I’m juggling three of my own and one of someone else’s. Sometimes I’ll come up with a new idea that seems really great, and I’ll temporarily stop the others ones until I’ve made satisfactory progress on the new one (but not necessarily finished). Now it’s midnight and I should head to bed.
I don’t really know what drives me. My wife asked me how I can just slog away at my ideas for weeks on end. I didn’t have an answer that truly satisfied me. I’m done with college and I’m doing what I enjoy: making stuff. I’m not a workaholic. I will relax and do other things when I’ve not devoted enough time to my wife. Or when friends are hanging out (virtually online playing games or in person). But sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on a wider repertoire of fun — a more limited version of what I did in college, like going outside more often and seeing new things. Or doing different and new activities with people other than what is now routine. I could get back into reading books (my book backlog is almost as bad as my Steam backlog). Maybe I could work on a hobby that I’ve not done before, or become a more active photographer.
Sometimes I feel like a bigger world is at my fingertips, but I’ve been too busy doing a couple of the things I love to be able to take advantage of the other things I enjoy. Part of me is stuck in this tightly-focused two to three-goal-juggling world, while the rest of me knows that all around me other things are moving too. Maybe I need to look up from my projects and glance around more often? For me, success is moving forward — making progress. But I don’t think I have a good grasp on what failure can be and whether my devotion to the success of a couple of ideas is in some way, a failure too.
