I've found it hard to focus on anything for prolonged periods of time over the last few months. I've written about anxiety and to an extent the depression it can lead to, both of which have played a part in contributing to this inability to focus but beyond these two things I think the major contributor is a lack of direction. I know I am not alone in this regard; quarantine, or lockdown, whatever term you wish to use to describe it, has put life on hold for over 2 billion people worldwide at one point which is insane to think about.
Most people have hopes and dreams, things they wish to achieve, things they aspire to, things that they devote their lives to work towards or at least that is the impression I get from most people I talk to, there's always something they want or something they need in their mind at that moment. Being in lockdown only amplified these feelings for those people but this is an alien concept to me, it always was, even as a child I didn't really have any aspirations other than an aspiration for knowledge which I have mentioned before which manifested itself in the desire to know everything there was to know about everything and the eventual realisation that wasn't possible and the concession that knowing as much as I could about the things that I was most interested in would suffice.
Beyond this however, the idea of aspirations in general were alien to me because all I ever wanted in life was to be happy and I was able to find happiness in the moment. There were times when my environment or the things I had to do made me feel sad or feel frustrated or a myriad of emotions and to that end in those moments the thing I wanted most was to make it through to the other side, that has been my prevailing mindset throughout recent months, to reach another place in time where I didn't have to deal with everything that was happening.
With everything I have been through however and the world in the state that it is, I have found it harder to find happiness in the moment but the reason for that is not as easy to define. There are so many little things that mount up to the point where that frustration and that sadness become ambient with no specific thing to attribute them to there's nothing to focus on overcoming in order to achieve that future happier state, if this pandemic were to vanish in an instant my life wouldn't change all that much beyond being able to leave the house. This leads to the realisation that with a lack of direction thrown into this mix I'm left staring into a void scrying for hope.
My life for the first 21 years or so was structured with each next logical step already mapped out and expected of me. Once I graduated from University the next logical step became employment with a path that led on from there filled with milestones of achievement relating to wealth and climbing up that metaphorical ladder. When I fell off that ladder there was no motivation to get back onto it and start climbing again. Instead my focus turned to making my life as it was as comfortable as I could make it, and for a time I managed to achieve that. I gained employment, I found some security for a time and managed to give my life stability. Then came my health problems relating to my Sarcoidosis diagnosis and my recovery from it. When I emerged at the other side however I was faced again with that ladder as the default path to take and having seen where it leads I can honestly say that doesn't appeal to me anymore, I don't think it ever did if I am honest it was just something to do for the sake of doing it.
That last statement I think is the problem, doing things for the sake of doing them provides no sense of fulfilment all they do is waste your time and energy. The entire concept of a structured career when you step back and examine it seems aimed at occupying as much of your time as possible and draining you of energy to the point where you don't have the time to question it and ask yourself why you do it. This was something my father questioned at a young age which led him to start his own business and seeing the freedom that gave him and the fact that there was a tangible reward for all the work he did and a direct benefit from working harder this served as a marker for me personally in my life as something to try and mirror. I am reluctant here to use the words "aspire to" because although the idea of running my own business is appealing, I have no idea what that business would actually do, what product or service I could sell that I actually have the skill and the confidence to provide. That and the lingering social anxiety I experience doesn't make client oriented business something that I would be comfortable doing.
My freelance work has sustained me and offers a mediation for me in that I control which projects I take on, there's less pressure in that regard as opposed to the ongoing commitments you have to make as a business. Even the writing that I do for my own pleasure that is self published through Amazon isn't something that I adhere to a strict routine with regards to, I don't produce X works every X weeks or months, what I write I do so when the mood strikes me. Even this blog is comprised of posts that are scheduled in advance to be published at regular intervals with multiple posts written when I experience bursts of creativity, I would not be able to maintain this blog if I had to sit down each day and write a post to be published on that day, my creative process does not work on demand. That kind of structure and rigidity kills any state of flow before it is ever reached.
What I find interesting about this inability to focus however is the fact that it isn't something that I suffer from alone, I am not the exception to the rule, in fact I think I might actually be the rule in this scenario, I think most people are just like me and that only a minority are actually capable of invoking focus and creativity on demand. This does lead to the question however of why there isn't a simple solution to this problem. If you feel tired there are a plethora of products you can buy that make you feel more awake, or you can sleep. If you have pains you can buy painkillers etc, but if you can't focus there is no over the counter product that you can purchase that actually helps you to focus - there are various herbal remedies and supplements that purport to improve this ability but none that I have tried have ever worked. As for meditation and other rituals, those have never been fruitful when I have explored them in depth. I think most of these herbal remedies if they manage to work for people are entirely placebo based, all they really achieve is to up the frequency of your trips to the bathroom.
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