the head of many ways

I feel like my attention is split in too many ways these days, and I’m not paying proper attention to most of them. The biggest one is work, the one place where I actually do feel like I’m paying enough attention; my job is a lot busier than it used to be (which is mostly good) and a lot more mentally taxing, so there’s less of me left over afterward.

Ted doesn’t get enough of my time even when he’s here, but that’s always been true; at least we have more time together than in the days when we were getting home from work at 5 or 6, going to bed at 8, and waking up at 4AM to be on the lake rowing by 5.

Online, where I used to mostly read blogs my attention is spread more widely, between LJ, Diaryland and other blogs, Facebook (I still don’t like the short format as much, but it’s very cool seeing so many old friends and classmates there), Ravelry (lots of interesting discussion there, not just on knitting). Occasionally I check Twitter. I’m currently moderating the SF Poetry forum, though that doesn’t take a ton of time (just checking to make sure there’s no new spam or any threads exploding. I try to comment on poetry at Absolute Write with some regularity, because if I want crit on my poems I need to pay my dues. And I’m reading slush at Every Day Poets now.

I’ve been pretty good about working out – I’m slacking today, since I should have biked to work, but it’s the first time in a while. We rowed last night, I biked to work Tuesday, rowed Monday, rowed Sunday, biked in Friday, and so on. Problem is on rowing nights I may or may not get home to change but if I do it’s quick (otherwise I drive straight to the boathouse – I bring my gear along so I have the option) and then I don’t get home for the night until 9PM or so. There’s just time to grab some food and go to bed.

I haven’t been writing much, either blogging or poems. That’s part of the reason I agree to do slushing, on the theory that if I read more poems I’m likely to write more. Not sure that’s quite working out for me.

I haven’t done any beadwork at all since being reunited with my tools (and the rest of my stuff) at the end of April. The May Beads of the Month arrived yesterday and they’re gorgeous, but I’m sure I won’t touch them at least until after Ted leaves. Any crafting energy goes to knitting, but there have been a lot of days in the last two weeks when I haven’t picked it up either.

I read of course (of COURSE) but there are a lot of evenings where a lot of my reading time is taken up by bouncing around the websites listed above and I only pick up the book at odd moments and at bedtime.

I’m not too worried about it; the important things are Ted, work, and rowing, in that order. (I don’t list reading, but then I don’t list breathing either. It just is.) Anything else gets to share what time and attention are left over, and I refuse to spend an energy beating myself up over not paying enough attention to anything that’s really just a hobby. But I am feeling a bit …. disconnected, fragmented, and I think maybe I should quit trying to do all those things at once. At least, not to this extent.

(Note: post title is a misquote from Diana Wynne Jones.)