JB's June Writing Challenge: D is for ... Distractions

I started this post in the car, on my smartphone, as the WGH and I sat at Sonic waiting for our milkshakes, after having procrastinated making a decision about what we wanted for dinner. It's been that kind of a day. Which gives me the perfect topic for the 'D' post: Distractions.

I've been distracted all day. The storms that blasted through the area last night woke us at midnight with the genuine fear that the nearly 300-year-old oak tree in our front yard had been struck by lightning. It hadn't, fortunately, but the strike itself, wherever it landed, was loud enough to rouse the dead. It took a while for me to get back to sleep after that, so I didn't wake up again until almost 10 o'clock. The WGH had fixed a nice little breakfast (fried eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee), and we sat enjoying it at our leisure, before I ventured into the study to balance the checkbook and pay a few bills, then get started working--on the book and the blog post.

That was the plan, anyway. Things today didn't exactly go according to plan, as you can tell by the lateness of this post. Like I said, distracted.

I currently have the luxury of being able to set my own deadlines for the books, but it won't always be that way. And succumbing to distraction is probably my single greatest fault as a writer. Most of the time I'm pretty good about staying on task. This mother of three long ago developed the glorious ability to "tune out" the ambient noise of my surroundings in order to focus on what I was working on, and although I don't utilize this talent nearly as often as I used to, I still on occasion will get myself wrapped up in something and lose complete track of what is going on around me, looking up to find that hours have passed. When I'm writing, this is a good thing. When I find something else that captures my attention, getting lost for hours makes for a very unproductive day. Today was one of those days.

But now the post is done, so I can say with confidence that I am still, for now, accomplishing at least one thing on the to-do list.

Until tomorrow ("E" topic to be determined and posted after the day job)--read a book. It's good for you.