Distractions

Some days I feel like my own road block. 

It starts with a small surge of inspiration.  Usually it's from a line in a book I'm reading, but these days it can be from anything.  From watching an old couple, hunched against the wind, walking up a hill.  Or from a young woman on the subway, staring blankly at a text message on her iPhone.  The other day, it was from a blue balloon I spotted drifting slowly in the sky.  The surge of inspiration always feels the same, has always felt the same.  I get it every time I feel the need to write. It's like a mosquito's high pitched buzz, except that it's inside me somewhere. I haven't quite placed where exactly--maybe in my nose, between my eyes, or even in my stomach.  Write, Joy, write, it says, all nasally. 

The next logical thing to do with this inspiration, with this sudden motivation, is to do something about it.  Except that…first, before I do that something, I realize I'm hungry, and that I should make something to eat.  And that requires going on Pinterest to look at some food porn for inspiration.  Avocado toast. Yumm.  But now that I'm done eating, my hands smell like garlic, so I should wash them.  You know what, I should just take a shower.  It's time.  I also MUST listen to this Tegan & Sara song that's been stuck in my head…twelve times.
And of course I have to do my make up. The Starbucks on my corner really does require that I look my best.

I also really need to instagram my marble loaf at Starbucks.

By the time I'm actually sitting down in front of my computer, the motivation I felt four hours before is long gone, lifted and disappeared, like a thunderstorm. 

Recently I'm starting to realize that I can't really blame my lack of productivity on these distractions.  After all, isn't life One Big Distraction?  Isn't growing up a distraction? Getting your heart broken? Having a baby? Losing a parent? Getting a divorce? Are these not all incredibly distracting things?

The distraction is me.  It is my 22 year old, semi- anxious, semi-ADD, semi-afraid-of-failure self.  It's a need to fill a void, the second that void opens.  It happens every day.  Walking the two blocks home from the subway, I have to blow my ears out with Foster the People.  Eating a snack, I have to watch Youtube videos.  Why is it that I'm so uncomfortable with my own company?  I think I'm fairly decent company, and yet, the second I un-squash myself from my various numbing activities, I fear the lightness that follows, the inspiration which feels like a beam of light expanding through two heavy clouds.  Something about it just kind of scares me. 

And yet, today, I did what I set out to do: I walked my ass to Starbucks and sat down to write.  I didn't think too much about it.  And that, right now, is enough.