Scattered

Listening to Tune-Yards (Bird-Brain)

I’ve got so much new music coming at me from my Blip DJs I don’t know where to focus my attention. It’s aural ADD – AADD if you will.

Here’s my workday now, to give you an idea of the level of distraction I’m talking about. Drive to work mentally scrolling through all the songs I want to remember to play. Each one crowds out the last, so by the time I get to my desk I’m struggling to remember which office is mine, let alone even one song title or band name.

Throw personal belongings under desk, open gmail (compulsive about checking email – I really need help) mostly to see who’s already blipping, then immediately open Blip. Half the time I don’t even bother sitting down first. Then I spend the first half hour mostly blipping with short breaks to check work email and figure out how much really needs to get done that day. I slowly and disjointedly accomplish about half of it in between blipping and compulsively checking my email.

Miraculously, all my clients are doing really well. (I put that in there in case my employers ever get wind of this blog). No, for real, they are, and it must be by sheer force of will on my part coz Blip is getting my A-game during work hours. And I’m not nearly as dedicated as many of the DJs I’m following. These kids (I’m pretty much the most geriatric thing on this site) are sending out a new song with clever comment at a rate of 15-20 blips an hour. How are they working at the same time?Must be a sign of my advanced years that I am utterly unable to focus on blipping and working at the same time. I’ll be in the middle of typing a sentence in a work-related email and a song will flit across my brain. I will stop mid-word and pop onto blip, then get sucked in for a good 8-10 minutes. Then I realize where I am and what I’m being paid to do and go back to the email, where it takes me a full minute sometimes to remember what the hell I was going to say.

I’ve gotten that way in general. I’ve got so much coming at me from so many directions that I’m dropping balls constantly. My 5-year-old daughter got so upset with me yesterday because I forgot which color headband she wanted. “You never remember ANYTHING!” she wailed. Real tears, the works. I asked her if she remembered everything, and she replied, “I remember everything! You don’t remember anything EVER!” Then she paused and her eyes welled up with tears as she cried, “I remember…. I remember… Mommy, I forget what I remember, but I remember everything!”

If she were on Blip she’d outpace me in a matter of minutes.