My Five Biggest Distractions From Writing

This has to be true of many authors or writers in general, but there are a few things out there that get in the way, or plain irritate me when I am trying to get to that zen place where I can focus. Like many others, I don’t like being disturbed while writing or working. It takes a lot of focus to do what we writers love to do, and having things get in the way of that are often things I have no control over. Then there are the other things that I have complete control over and I allow to deter me.

Please tell me I am not alone!!

1 – My dogs. They need attention. And a lot of it. They are pampered and want some lovin’ on a consistent basis. Half the time they want to go outside or else I have a nice pile or lake to clean up in the living room where they do the do. They are pee pad trained, but they are under the impression that they sometimes only have to have a foot on the pad for it be okay to take a piss. This result in clean up duty. Other times they want in my lap. That’s okay for an hour or so, but then my legs go to sleep and I have to place them on my bed or something. Having brains the size of walnuts, they simply don’t understand this and throw a hissy fit when I put them down. And then there are the times when I don’t know what they want. I don’t speak dog. They just look at me and cry and cry and cry. *shrugs*

2 – The Internet. I am an internet junkie. And lord knows you cannot read just one tweet. You cannot watch just one YouTube video. So if I stumble upon one, I am going to be distracted for a while. And then there’s email.

3 – Living at home. Like so many others my age, the economy made it impossible for me to live on my own. I am back with the family. One member needs a lot of care. So sometimes I have to squeeze in my writing in short intervals. Which is okay. I am living here rent free after all.

4 – Work outs. I am on a new mission to get my dad into shape. He desperately wants to lose some weight and I want to help him. So I have been waking up at 4:50 a.m. (yes, you read that correctly) and doing P90X with him so he can stay motivated and he won’t have to do it alone. He needs to be at work at a little before seven and he commutes, so the early hour is necessary. It also makes me feel better about my body and health, etc. But sometimes I really need to go back to bed. This morning made that impossible and I am still dragging a bit.

5 – Errands. Ever since I got my license for the first time all those ten years ago, it has also been a license to run errands. I usually get about one a day, at least. Given my recent license renewal trouble (which I intend to write another blog post about) I got a bit of a break from that recently. But now I have it back and renewed, the errands will start rolling in again.

PS – Good news for me today. I finally bought a printer for my house. No more getting other people to print my stuff out from their offices as a personal favor. I really hated doing that, but I literally couldn’t afford a printer. And I had to rearrange my room just to have a place to put it. Moving sucks.

To be fair, I do own another one. But in the move, the disk to install it on my laptop got lost. Boo hiss!!