We Are Squirrels

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spaz

Along the same lines of my recent post about Millennials and their work ethic, “The Generation of the Confused Working Class“, here is me going blah blah blah some more about the terrible “problems” my generation faces. 

I have the attention span of a squirrel on cocaine.
This is a recent development.
As a child, I was way too self-involved to be distracted by anything.
Being an only child will do that to you.
Sitting for several hours by yourself talking to Trolls will do that to you.

Now that I’m a big kid, I’m self-involved, society-involved, media-involved, and technology-involved.
Now my head is filled with a million notions of what has been and what could be.
Now I drink to make the voices stop.

On-set ADD sucks ass- and I don’t even have ADD. I’m one of those self-diagnosed folks. You know, the ones that figure it’s easier to give a name to something they won’t take responsibility for? Like totally flaking on your friend’s wedding shower because you decided your time was better spent alphabetizing your CD collection that you don’t listen to and when you get to the letter “G” you take a nap for three hours, then wake up and decide that you want pepperoni rolls so you go to the store and buy pepperoni, cheese, and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and make pepperoni rolls and you realize you feel really tired still and go back to sleep and you wake up around 4AM with cheese in your belly button and a couple of missed calls from your friends wondering where the hell you are.

My Dad has ADHD. He likes to talk about it a lot. Sometimes I’ll call him and say, “Hey, thanks. I think you gave me whatever you have” and hang up. Or we’ll be talking and he’ll say, “Well, you know, I told my manager to F off when he asked me to audition for a commercial where I dress as a chicken all because of my ADHD,” and I’m like, “Dad, that doesn’t even make any sense. You told your manager to buzz off because you didn’t want to dress as a chicken. What does that have to do with ADHD?” Truthfully, I think my Mom is the one with ADHD. She spends about half of our conversations talking to the dog:

“Lauren, I heard on the news that the weather in Austin is going to be Lucy!”
“The weather is going to be Lucy?”
“You’re such a crazy little girl!”
“Mom?”
“Get out of my armpit! She’s in my armpit!”
“Mom, most of the time I completely tune out when you lecture me about the weather but now I need to know!”
“Can you believe that I got Operation Dumbo Drop on DVD for $5 yesterday?”
“Do you even like that movie?”
“Of course! Ray Liotta is so handsome. Isn’t he, Lucy? Isn’t he???”

I’ve gotten away from the point I’m trying to make here.
What I want to discuss is that sometimes my creative well is dried up as an old lady’s cooter and sometimes the creative juices are flowing as freely a…dear God, staying focused on this post is difficult. I’ve so far answered 7 phone calls, tweeted 4 times, went pee pee once, and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror while I counted gray hairs once. No, twice.

OK, the point I’m trying to get to is that sometimes I have a million little creative projects I want to do and I don’t know where to begin so I become paralyzed and don’t do any of them and wake up to finding cheese in my belly button.

I like when I have a million little creative things to do. I feel like a Ninja Turtle newly ramped up on pizza and ready to fight crime. Ready to take on the world with new found piss and vinegar. Is that an expression? I’m ready to take on the world with vinegar and then I start thinking about all the things I want to do and the vinegar becomes fermented. Or is vinegar already fermented? So I sit there and I get super anxious because my head is swimming with a bunch of ideas and I just can’t move. Then I get on Facebook. I’ve tried prioritizing my creative projects before but I just want to do them all at once. I HAVE TO DO IT ALL RIGHT NOW. Write freelance article #1, write freelance article #2, finish screenplay #1 that I started in high school, work on weird art project that I had a dream about and feel as though I should follow through on, blog redesign, learn to sew and sell shit on Etsy, write screenplay #2 that you wrote 10 pages of last week, invent some iPhone app even though you know zilch about programming and code or whatever the hell apps are made out of, finish novel, write song about how you will never finish any of these things.

I see this behavior all the time. It’s not just me.
Everyone in LA is “working on a script”, everyone in Austin is “working on an album”, and everyone in New York is “working on an art piece”. We start things and never finish them. Then we start something else and then something else and then we delude ourselves and others into thinking that some day we’ll actually be that screenwriter, that musician, or that artist. Why do we get distracted? I’m pretty sure it’s because of all this newfangled technology, but how does someone who wants to become a professional blogger, who depends on the Internet and social media, not let all that jazz distract her?

Phew. 14 hours later blog post complete.

Do you have problems focusing on your creative endeavors? What do you do to prioritize your creative projects?