LJ Idol Season 8, Week 9 - Counterintuitive.
It happens every time.
Every.
Damned.
Time.
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This time, it was the phone that sent me back to square one.
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My Imp of the Perverse rejoices in creating situations for me that result in self-sabotage. One of its most insidious ploys, one that has evolved over the last few years, is a degradation of my multi-tasking skills. I can still wrestle with several matters at once and handle them all with ease and poise...
....if I am not interrupted.
Today the phone rang just when I'd built up a head of steam towards tackling my inbox.
And thus now I have to go back to each of the open tabs on my computer to remind myself in which order I was answering those e-mails and sending out related ones, while checking my bank balance and planning what bills need to be sent out today, and keeping an eye on my volunteer staffer who may need help with the inventory count we are doing, and so on and so on.
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One would think that my much-vaunted memory would enable me to just pick up a task at the exact point I dropped it, and that I could just continue efficiently and unperturbedly.
Alas, not so. Somewhere over time, probably when I stopped temping, I lost that. And it's troubling me more and more each day that I cannot regain that skill when I really, truly need it.
Logic dictates that perhaps, in recognizing that I literally need to "reset" myself when I get an interruption, I should only handle one task at a time until the task is done.
Life doesn't work like that.
And so I get bundled into emotional tangles of frustration and anger at the fact that I AM FALLING FURTHER BEHIND AND I NEVER GET A BREAK ARRRRRRGGGGGH ARRRRRGGGGGH RAWR, and so this morning the desktop gargoyle on the corner of my computer station gets to have a staring contest with me, its red flashing eyes not to be outdone by mine own.
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It's been ten minutes since the phone call. Time to "reset".
Until the next interruption.