Focus: My first attempt at Five Minute Friday

Below is my first attempt to participate in Five Minute Friday. I’m hoping it will help me get my writing back in track.

Focus is something I don’t seem to have a lot of these days. As I’ve been struggling to get my manuscript for my family advent devotional ready for Kindle formatting I’m constantly interrupted. My son only sleeps for snatches during the day and my daughter is feeling needy and constantly looking for extra attention. It seems like I reread the same paragraph two or three times looking for errors and trying to reformat sentences only to be interrupted by a poopy diaper or the need for a snack or (yes, we do sometimes watch TV) a new episode of Thomas the Tank Engine or Veggie Tales. It seems like between feeding and pumping and all the other things required in a day there is so little time left for me. I’m still learning the ins and outs of typing while pumping. This is the first time I’ve been able to manage it with both my hands.

I’m someone who usually gets in the zone. Once I get past the initial activation energy I can go for hours, unless of course I’m interrupted. The life of a mother is a series of poorly timed interruptions, unfinished thoughts and random projects in process. I used to be Ok with this. But somehow, but baby #2 I’m finding myself less tolerate. Even this relatively short post is interrupted by my son waking and needing to be rocked back to sleep. Fortunately my generous husband is handling it since I’m still hooking up to my breast pump.

Oh to concentrate on just one thing. To really focus on a task and complete it or at least make significant progress toward it. I sometimes think that I gave up the right to that when I had children. But yet I know women who seem to do that every day. What is their secret?