Fighting for Focus

Maybe it's just because I'm hitting a lot of roadblocks in the getting my job done lately, but I'm struggling with remaining focused. What with flakey connections to my remote PC, terrible videoconferencing technical difficulties induced by people over whom I have no control randomly resetting firewall and Polycom settings, insane three-hour meetings during which I can hear every third word because of the aforementioned connection and videoconferencing difficulties, it's no wonder.

And naturally this is compounded by anxiety as I await an official job offer that will, like Calgon, take me away from all this.

I find it exasperating to be making progress on something only to be stymied by some technical hiccup that slows things down, and this leads to distraction. When something is taking a long time to run, compile, come up, show up, whatever, I just pop over to another window and start doing something else. When I've got every real thing that I'm trying to work on stuck, then I really feel like I'm being driven slowly mad by the internets.

I don't have any insight or solution. I'm really just complaining.

Maybe I should just work on one thing at a time and accept that I'll be doing it slowly whilst waiting for the system in question to get its act together. Perhaps it's like coping with an injury -- I just need to accept that I won't be able to use my broken left leg as fast as I would like until it heals. I can try to run a marathon on it, but it is unlikely that I would have much luck at that. Perhaps the same is true on somewhat hobbled systems I'm working with -- I just need to get the Zen mind kicked into gear and be in the moment of waiting for it to return my results, be appropriately configured and patched, or what have you.

Yes, be in the moment. I'm breathing deeply.

(Image from pushindaisies.com)