Chronic Scatterbrain – Signs, Symptoms, and Remedies

I am finding it incredibly and increasingly difficult these days to organize my thoughts into enough coherent and jointed sentences to make up a post.

I don’t know if my lack of focus is a direct result of the amount of work wedding planning is, or because my mind is on my new job, but I do know that it’s seeping into all aspects of my life, and manifesting itself in my words, thoughts, movements, and even my decision making.

Case in point: I had dinner with Cait last, and I stopped to get some cheesecake. At the bakery, I was faced with a difficult decision: chocolate or strawberry cheesecake.

I didn’t know whether Cait preferred chocolate or fruit flavoured cheesecake (and I definitely don’t discriminate), so my initial thought was that I would get one piece of strawberry and one piece of chocolate and have her choose.

Unfortunately, they only had single slices of the chocolate, and were out of single strawberry slices. This put me back to dilemma. Without even batting an eye, in response, I got an entire strawberry cheesecake.

I only realized how ridiculous that sequence of brain events was when we were digging into the cheesecake.

My brain is a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but instead of staying on the adventure that I chose, it throws in paragraphs of the alternative adventure as well as bits and pieces of the screenplay for the Curious Case of Benjamin Button just to keep me on my toes.

Here’s the cherry on the (strawberry cheese)cake: to prove just how scatter-brained I really am, before starting this sentence you are currently reading, I got up to get myself a glass of water and open a window. I first poured myself the water, then I set it down to open the window. After opening the window, I’d forgotten where I had set the water and had to search all over for it, only to find it in another room that I don’t even remember entering. 

Shit is going down.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, I’m afraid that it has affected not only the posting frequency on this little old blog, but also the…

SQUIRREL!

..just kidding. My scatterbrain has also had an effect on the type of posts I’ve been able to mash together. If you reach back into the Add Vodka archives from the last couple of months, you’ll notice mostly goal updates and disjointed posts about tire purchases and wanting to live abroad.

While those are things I may have written about previously on my blog, pre-scatterbrain, they would have made a lot more sense.

Or maybe I’ve always been a mess and I’m just figuring this out now.

Regardless, I’m hoping to find a focus and a bit more zen after the wedding is all over next week. I’m starting my new job the week after, so that will be a difficult transition, but this shit show CANNOT continue when I start. How would that be for a first impression?

After reading some articles on chronic scatterbrain, I’m led to believe that much of the issue roots from “multitasking”. There are a billion things going on in my brain right now, from wedding planning, to new job excitement, to seeing family and friends and remembering birthdays and anniversaries and other important dates, that my mind just can’t cope.

Instead of wandering away to text my maid of honour onelastthing half a paragraph through a post, finishing the post (or at least the framework) might be the best way to go.

Many of the articles I’ve read on the matter also recommend minimizing distractions, but unfortunately my brain itself is the distraction 90% of the time and I don’t think I could minimize that any farther.

Scatterbrain (or difficulty focusing as fancy people like to call it) is also highly attributed to stress, of which I have plenty. The stressors in my life are good, exciting stressors, but stressors nonetheless and signs of this are definitely prevalent in my body and apparently mind.

Sometimes, getting things out onto paper a computer screen helps me sort through some things and think clearer, so it would do me some good to start blogging more (especially if we’re talking real, actual, logical blog posts).

To those readers who aren’t completely sick of my shit yet: thank you for sticking around and I hope that I’m able to refocus myself as soon as humanly possible.