Random Thoughts During FL Vac

So much has been written on the impact of television and the Internet. They bring new worlds and new ideas into our homes, but they also rob us of energy and convince us that we live exciting lives when in reality we spend hours a day watching actors pretend to live exciting lives. For more, read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. What I’m really wondering is how much Internet—I don’t have cable and so can’t watch television except one or two weekly favorites I catch on my computer—is responsible for what I feel is a shameful inability to focus and prioritize. I seem to jump from task to task without remaining fixed long enough on one to get to a point that allows me to say, “Done!” Or at least, “Done with that phase of the project.” These days, I think I would be happy to say, “Even though I didn’t finish, look how much I accomplished!” Then again, blaming my lack of focus on the Internet is probably an easy out. I think I stay too busy, piling one project on top of another or getting involved in one organization too many. I live like most Americans, I think, with the idea that I should be able to do everything that interests me, the problem being that so much is of interest. To write requires white space, both on the page and in the writer’s life. The metaphor, not original with me, resonated with me from the first. White space, I thought. Yes, that’s just the word for what I need to be at my most creative. At the time, I could find white space at least some of the time. Now, never. If I am serious about my stories and the novel they lead me to, I have to take responsibility for creating the white space I need to be able to devote the time writing takes. You can’t be creative in fifteen-minute interludes. No will be my word of the summer.