Ever have the feeling that every single time you sit down (or stand up) to do something, you get interrupted about every 30 seconds? It feels like that most of the time around here, which is weird, because there’s no one around to interrupt but a couple of dogs. Yesterday, when I was trying to get out from under the two- or three-day task of rewriting and posting this summer’s English 102 course, the phenomenon seemed to be working in full force.
Woke at four, as usual, which should’ve given me plenty of time to get my act together. Wrote blog posts, started back to work on the course, eventually got around to fixing breakfast. If it’s not dogs barking and mock-fighting, it’s phones ringing, e-mail notifications binging, timers going off, the teapot whistling, people showing up at the door, plants crying out for water as temps hit 100 degrees, the pool pump making a weird noise, pool cleaner stopping dead in the water… Even Gerardo the Lawn Dude Extraordinaire surfaced, bearing a check I’d written a few days before. He’d left it in his pocket when he put his pants through the washer, and the ink washed off. Would I write him another?
Hateful HP scanner software made me rescan a check for deposit four times. It operates so slowly that I’ll get up while it’s dragging its way through a process and go do something else: self-interruption, as it were. Went off to make the bed. Came back, restarted the program. Went off to feed the dog. Came back, restarted. Went off to put a load of laundry in the washer. Came back, restarted. And so on to infinity.
The whole day went that way. Got a lot done, but it was all done in fits and starts. Gestalt is the pattern of my life.
Came down with a sore throat yesterday. Cringe! Surely not a relapse of that hideous disease that made me so sick…and with which La Maya is still sick after six weeks of it???
Had to go to choir, that notwithstanding. Dragged home, dropped a Zyrtec knockoff, hoping the throat was an allergy symptom. Climbed into the sack around 10:30. Fell asleep over detective-novel copy, due back to the publisher on the 23rd.
Awake again at 4 a.m. At that hour, dawn is just barely beginning to break. How does the body know when the sky is only just starting to grey out? Must be magnetic, like a bird’s brain. Oh well. At this time of year, that’s a fact of life: the alarm is set to go off at 4 in the morning.
It’s kind of nice, because it does provide time to approach the day at a leisurely pace.
Throat still hurt. Must not be an allergy: otherwise the Zyrtec would have fixed it overnight.
Out the door at 6:45, off to the weekly business group meeting. So, so, sooo tired I could barely drive. Almost fell asleep at the wheel while stopped at a light. Realized…uh-oh. Shouldn’t have been driving at all.
Still zombified by the time the Scottsdale meeting broke up around 9:30. Had to consciously fight falling asleep as I drove back across the city. WTF?
Got home. Crawled into the sack around 10:15 or 10:30, after a few minutes of doggy exuberance. Charley soon gave up trying to drag Cassie off the bed and settled down on the floor. Slept all the way through until two o’clock in the afternoon! Holy mackerel. I don’t usually sleep in the daytime at all, much less for four hours.
Woke up feeling refreshed, for the first time in weeks. And the sore throat was gone.
Googled Zyrtec. Decided the toxic drowziness was probably a side effect. When they say “24-hour,” they’re not kidding.
Started to write this post. Ignored Charley. He responded by depositing diarrhea all over the family room. Cleaned that up. Remembered the frying plants. Pavement too hot to walk on barefooted; went to get shoes; interrupted by discovery that Charley had already retrieved shoes (he is a retriever, after all) and was eating them. Retrieved shoes from retriever. Watered plants. Back to computer. New e-mail. Decided to check neglected college e-mail system. Important message from departmental secretary, nearly missed. Cope with that, after retrieving another stolen shoe from the retriever. And so on, again, to infinity.
Many, many, many interruptions later, came back to this post, which by then had managed to disappear. Rewrote the first part. M’hijito showed up an hour and a half late. Miserable day for him, no doubt: when he refrains from complaining, that’s when you know he’s beyond his endurance level. Played with dogs. Consumed whiskey. Saw son and dog out the door. Came back to finish this. “This” interrupts plan for dinner, which interrupts need to finish editing the detective novel, which once again will interrupt sleep tonight.
And so, to work….
Your days sound weirdly like mine. I ignored the Pug too long and he peed on me and the couch. That was after a day of getting interrupted by phone calls, emails, texts, and myself while trying to write a few posts and actually get ahead for once. Life, Interrupted indeed…
I find I do a *lot* of “self-interruption,” as you put it. I have begun to stop beating myself up for not sitting in one spot for hours on end and recognizing that in a lot of ways, I do work better on most things when I have these little bursts of activity all over the place. Some days though, when something really time consuming needs done, I find myself trudging to the office, much as I hate it there! Fewer ways to self-interrupt there.