Distractions

Part of my kitchen has been taken out and soon all of it will be!

Yes, this is the current state of my kitchen. It kind of matches the current state of my mind – somewhat messed up and pretty cluttered. No wait, that’s my living room. And the spare bedroom. We had to put the stuff from the kitchen somewhere. We’re beginning a total kitchen reno and our home has been thrown into chaos.

The mess has moved into my living room.

And into the spare bedroom.

This is just one more distraction in my life lately. It’s a really good distraction; our kitchen was a beat-up survivor from the eighties. About nine years ago, I painted the original brown cupboards white and that helped for a while. But we’re over the old cupboards and so ready for a new kitchen.

The older I get, the more distractions disturb me. I told you last week about my cousin’s death. Anyone who’s lost a family member can tell you how upsetting it is, and how it occupies your mind.
It doesn’t take much to distract me. After my annual physical, I got a call from my doctor’s office saying he wanted to see me. Of course, he couldn’t see me for over a week, and I obsessed about what he was going to tell me the entire week. Turns out it was nothing (or likely will be nothing), but it was definitely on my mind. And not in a good way.

My daughter is currently applying to be accepted into the nurse practitioner program. She had her interview this week, which turned out to be a more of a thinking-on-your-feet experience. They provided her with several medical scenarios and she had to figure out what she would do. She had no idea how she did. The good news is that she made it to the interview process; nearly half the applicants didn’t. The bad news is that there are only twenty-five spots for the remaining seventy-six people who were interviewed. I’ll be obsessing over her chances until mid-April when the university makes its final decisions.

All these distractions are effecting my writing. As in, I’m not. With the kitchen reno, I just don’t have time. And with all these things on my mind, it’s hard to concentrate even when I do sit down to write.

I’m not very good at handling distractions. I let a lot of things take me away from writing. So, dear readers and fellow Word Wranglers, how do you handle the distractions of life and still manage to keep on keeping on?