378. A Wild Animal

Time is passing. I’m cognizant of this fact, even if I don’t want to be. I can see it ticking away in front of me. Not just because it’s displayed on the screen I’m looking at, but because the whole world is moving, and that movement means time is passing.

I might be able to ignore the passage of time if it weren’t for the tasks looming over this interval. Not some future interval, but the one I’m living right now. I should be working. That is what these hours are supposed to be for. There are things I have to do. I have obligations and I need to fulfill them.

But I can’t seem to stay focused on my work. I’m too energized and my attention refuses to settle. It’s a wild animal. It goes where it wants, when it wants. Right now, it seems to possess no inclination to look at anything resembling work. What does it want to look at? Almost anything else.

Driven by an obscure need to seek, my attention shifts from one thing to the next. At the same time, I don’t feel distracted. I’m fully immersed the things my attention selects. I look for only as long as I must and then I move on. I’m absorbing something in the process, something that feels necessary.

Still, time is passing. I need to finish my work, but my attention is uncooperative. I think about forcing it. Maybe I even try. But it doesn’t make any difference. My attention is going where it wants and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It’s only after hours have passed and I’m starting to feel tired that my attention becomes malleable. Now I have a leash on it and I can get it to consider my obligations. There are many but I limit myself to one. Domesticated by fatigue, my attention narrows and I start to build momentum. My world shrinks to nothing more than my present state and the one that logically follows it. Now I can be the machine the world says I must be.