Distraction

Distraction

Distraction can mean many things to many people.   For me, it’s the bane of my existence.  I am a person diagnosed with Adult Attention Deficit several years ago.  And distraction causes endless aggravation and frustration in my life.   I am like the dogs in the movie Up! that are having a serious meeting and then one of them yells Squirrel! and they are off and running.  That word is a household name in my life.  “I was going to do that but I saw a squirrel…”   “I am sorry I burned dinner but I was cooking and …I saw a squirrel”.   Let me give you an example of what my life is like.

One night I decide I am going to boil some eggs to make egg salad for my lunch the next day.  I put them on the stove and turn on the burner.   At that moment my friend shows up at my door with a bottle of wine and we go into the living room and watch t.v. and make short work of the bottle.  At one point during the evening I smell something cooking, but because I lived in an apartment I figure it is one of the neighbours cooking dinner.  Later, I hear a noise from the kitchen but tell myself it is the cat and ignore it.   Finally, I hear a loud bang and run to check it out.   Yeah, you guessed it.  My eggs have boiled dry and exploded all over the kitchen.   I had totally forgotten them, distracted by my friend and the wine, and not even the clues of the smell and noise twigged my memory.  I refer to that incident as the time I fried eggs in their shell.

My life is full of incidents like that and luckily no serious damage has ever happened.   My friends and family see my inability to focus and my forgetfulness and distractibility as part of my charm and react with good humour most of the time.   I also deal with it with good humour because if you can’t laugh you’ll go crazy right?   Here are a few things I am known to do because I have been distracted:

Thrown my cell phone in the trash instead of the garbage in my hand.

Spent time looking for the sunglasses, cellphone or keys that are in my hand.

Carried a bag of garbage upstairs to my room instead of putting it out in the garage.

Lost a parking receipt I just had in my hand seconds ago.

Worn my shirt inside out to lunch with friends (more than once). 

And the list goes on.  

Distraction isn’t always a bad thing.   We use it every day in one way or the other.  We distract ourselves with t.v. and social media as a way of coping with stress.   We distract our children to avert a tantrum.   We use mind over matter to distract ourselves from pain.   We go to our “happy place” to distract us from emotional pain. 

However, right now, COVID-19 is a huge distraction for the entire world.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying it is not a bad thing.  It is.  It’s a serious crisis. People are dying in huge numbers.   But the single-mindedness of the news coverage has me feeling very anxious.   I find myself wondering what else is going on in the world that we aren’t being informed about?   And what happened to all the stuff that was in the news before this virus struck.   What happened to the Wet’suwet’ en people and the pipeline?  What happened to the blockades on the railways?  What happened with the impending war on Iran because the airplane they shot down?  None of that stuff has stopped happening.   But we are all looking at this virus, we are distracted by the threat of our own health and safety.   I find it very unsettling.

I think it’s important right now that we are informed about this virus and its impact on our lives and that of the rest of the world.  But I can’t help thinking that there is something else we need to be looking at as well…