Focus

I lack focus.

My mind wanders from one thought to the next, switching quickly through all the threads running in parallel.  It's somehow never enough to think about one thing at a time.  Instead the focus switches, bringing a different thought, one that was already meandering along slowly and quietly in the background, to the forefront as soon as my attention wanes from whatever I was formerly attempting to focus on.  It's a big problem when I'm trying to get any work done, and it's a big problem with me in general.  My interests and knowledge lacks depth, though their breadth is extensive.  I am so eager sometimes to take in everything that I fail to be an adequate source on any one subject.  It's something I've come to despise.  I'm shallow and hollow in a sense.  I am envious of those others who can justify their passions with the knowledge to match, those who truly are pursuing a greater depth of insight into a single or select few things.  Against these people I feel inadequate, a lesser person who has failed in a sense to live up to my goal of aiming to the best version of myself I can create.  And I feel exposed when I find myself interacting with these people.  I feel that my lack of depth is obvious, it must be immediately clear I think, how much I am something of a sham.  Here is someone who is not worth talking to, after all, enthusiasm and knowledge that extends only so far as to scrape the surface of things is cheap and abundant.  Compared to these people who carry a truly deep and complex network of knowledge in their minds, I am little better than a hollow mannequin.  A shell, simply painted to reflect the little that anyone can come to learn from glancing at the surface of a body of knowledge.

What I lack is devotion.  A large part of the identity of those who are truly great at something is defined by their work.  They are their work, their work is them.  Not entirely, but enough that it matters, enough that it becomes a valuable thing and raises the value of their own identity.  I have always been intrigued by too many things, and I spent far too much of my younger life being frustrated by the fact that I would not live long enough to be able to learn everything.  Still, in a sense, I've rebelled against this notion, and have come to sample a bit of everything, and it hasn't helped me.  Sometimes I wonder also what would've happened if I'd simply rolled with my natural inclination towards art and writing.  But these are things people sometimes told me I had a talent for, and so it was not mysterious or fascinating enough.  I wanted to learn everything, and I wonder if I maybe migrated towards those things I knew would be most difficult for me, those things I knew I would have to spend more time learning.  But they were also the things that required me to focus outside of myself, whereas art and writing is often about introspection.  There is a whole universe of things out there, and I gravitated towards that which was farther away, though introspection comes more naturally, unavoidably even.  I don't regret choosing the path that I have, I would choose it again given the choice.  I do regret how bad I am at following it.

At this point, I can't say that I am my work, it exists outside of me, something I must pursue. One thing, amongst a whole slew of other things competing for space in my mind.  I think I've inadvertently aspired to become a lense that captures every detail of the world I'm in.  An impossible task that I am bound to fail at again and again and do a poor job of.  I hope someday I can train myself to find the subset of things that it would be best for me to focus on.  The set of things such that in producing my work I would be happy to have define me in part and define in part.