Writing as Antidote

I spend 8-10 hours at work each day in front of two computer screens, each displaying multiple open windows, with each of those streaming constant flows of information in the form of e-mails, news reports, briefings, internet searches, etc. I often find myself simultaneously drafting three or four e-mails amid constant distractions from the office TV (usually tuned to some inane Fox News program), colleagues with questions or urgent action items, and flurries of phone calls. The truck radio is always tuned to NPR unless Steven (country music afficionado) or Sabrina (pop and hip-hop) are with me, in which case whoever won the fight for "shotgun" gets to choose their own radio station. At home, I enjoy catching up with friends on facebook in the form of pithy, humorous, or lame wall postings that are usually never more than a sentence or two in length. To Michelle's annoyance, I can't leave the TV on a single station through commercials. When the commercials start, so does my channel surfing for an acceptable secondary program. With all of this constant neural stimulation/distraction, it should be no surprise then that I feel scatter-brained and ADD-ish to the point of wondering if I actually have a condition that could benefit from a Ritalin prescription...

All of the above is explanation for why I'm quickly learning to enjoy writing. Sitting down undisturbed (relatively) for 20-30 minutes to formulate complete thoughts and ideas in a focused manner is excellent mental exercise. Choosing topics, ideas, words, punctuation, and grammar force me to do kind of a 360 degree appraisal of my own thinking, what my desired message is, and how it will be perceived by readers. Trying to capture the right tone to achieve the desired response is tough. For me, attempting to write something humorous, for example, is really elusive. So far, I don't have enough feedback from readers to see if I'm hitting the mark and I don't know if Michelle and the kids are humoring me when they say they liked my latest post.

I also find that despite my education and training, I still mess simple things up like tenses, subject-verb agreement, etc. Because I've got a goal to write at least one post per week and I've got limited time to write, I almost always post to the blog prematurely. This inevitably means multiple revists to the edit page to correct mistakes found after rereading what I've written. I suppose this simply goes to show how writing is a continuous process and it's rare to get something completely right the first (or second or third or sixteenth) time. Makes me wonder how literature's prolific stars managed to produce the high quantity of high quality writing they did. Natural talent, training, education, and life experience are all certainly part of the equation. But I also think many of the writers I'm thinking of weren't encumbered by the noisy, distracting environment in which many of us live and work. Would we have Shakespeare, Whitman or Thoreau if, in their days, they had omnipresent e-mail, 300 on-demand channels, and fb accounts?

In any case, sitting down to write a blog post each week has been my antidote to an addled brain and low attention span. No Ritalin for me, thanks--I've got CuriousSmith. What do you have?