I wanted to write down what I did today because it helps me remember that I did something with my life other than stare at a wall. I got up late. I had switched off the alarm for some reason. Then there was driveway yoga. I worked on the article. I wrote some about why I think my reading method works. I have managed to reduce the article from 14 pages to 7.
Mike, the carpet guy, finally came by. He said he could re-lay it after Scott pulled it up and rolled it tightly. We had been waiting for him for several days so we could get the process started. I wanted it done before election day. I expect the end of the world to arrive on that date: the whole economy to collapse for one reason or another.
I found the books I have ordered through Amazon on my Kindle. The customer service agent just had me shut the Kindle down, reboot it, and go to the library. There they were.
The gardeners were here today. I am more proactive with them than Mike was. Mike would be so proud of me.
I participated in a half-hour workshop on something called Book Nook, which makes books available digitally. It allows me to work with students online using leveled material. I won’t have access to it until I am officially a Step Up Tutor.
Laura, one of the administrators for Step Up, told me they had received my second fingerprint form. It was currently being checked to see that it was filled out correctly. Oh, boy. I’m beginning to feel hopeless. But that’s okay because I have students coming in from other sources.
Yesterday, Yvette moved a four-drawer bureau to retrieve a ball for Elsa. Wow! I have trouble opening the drawers in this piece of furniture. She left thinking I might like to clean behind it before it was moved back. After I wiped up the dirt back there, I tried to move it. I discovered that the bureau was easier to move than the individual drawers. Here I had been so impressed with Yvette’s strength.
I called Darby to ask her if she wanted to join me for my before-dinner walk. I giggle with her. What a gift! She is the person I can do that with. Laughter, light giggles, big and small smiles were the bedrock of my relationship with Mike. Boy, I miss it.
Darby and I went all around the block. This Is the first time I’ve done that in months. My leg was in great shape tonight.
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Musings:
I learned about attention residue.
I think I was listening to a TED talk on attention. It talked about two negative aspects of attention switching or multitasking. As I remember, it was specifically about responding to emails while at work. One negative effect was attention segmenting.
That’s not too hard to understand. You switch attention from one task to another, not because it is time to stop but in response to the pull of an extra call. It means you never get to build up a head of steam when working on a project.
The second aspect was even more interesting to me: attention residue. This means that while you’ve returned to the main task, your mind is still processing, mulling over whatever the distraction was about. Even without a heavy emotional load to deal with, the mind does not let go of something that easily. I think PTSD can be viewed as a heavily loaded attention residue. It continues to command our attention and does not allow us to focus on the task before us.
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