focused?

All day long, I work. I am so focused on work that I simply do not pay attention right now to anything that may distract me. I wake up at 3 in the morning and I panic that I should have taken care of a detail of some later August obligation. I do it then, at 3:15 a.m., because if I don’t, I may put it aside again.

By late afternoon, I have to stop. I have to keep a long ago scheduled dental appointment. I bike there so rapidly that for the first time in a long time I work up a real biker’s sweat. As I plump down on the dentist’s chair, the assistant tells me – hey, it's cool the way you look. I know you probably think you’re, well, kind of disheveled and unkempt, but it’s cool.

Thanks. I guess.

I bike back home on Old Sauk Road and I think – I am so distracted. I haven’t taken a photo the entire day.

I turn off toward a bike path I used to love when I lived not far from this neighborhood. It wiggles west of the street and for several seconds, it makes you feel like you’ve left the city behind.

I look around me. Wow. It’s even more rustic than I remember.





And then it strikes me – I am not on the bike path. I am on some affluent person’s private driveway.

Ooops.

I cut across to the bike path and continue, still thinking kind thoughts toward a summer-like day in green Madison, only without the rugged unkempt look of a dirt path.





At home, I put aside thoughts of a good meal. It’ll be frozen dinners tonight. No matter. I’m almost finished with Spring Semester work. Almost.