Friday, November 5, 2010

Distractions

Distractions seem to pop up at the most inopportune times. When you're languishing around, bored to death , nothing seems to distract you. Everything's just plain. But when you have things of the utmost importance to do, distractions seem to pop up in the most random of places, like that retarded whack-a-mole game you find at arcades.

For example, when you have a solid month of vacation with absolutely nothing to do, you end up getting stuck watching episodes of Lost, not because you want to, but because you can't find anything better to do with your time. On the flip side, when you have four projects to do, a lab to write up, 1667 words to write, a math midterm to study for, and a portfolio report due this weekend, you suddenly find it interesting to go read a book about a boy whose father is a Greek god. And so you decide to download a Percy Jackson e-book and read it (which was really good by the way if you're into Greek mythology like I am). You would have never thought to do something like that during your vacation, but it seems like the most awesome thing to do right now.

But I guess what you define as a distraction depends on your own point of view. Some people tell me that NaNoWriMo is a distraction from my school work, and I should instead be focusing on my work intensive engineering. And they are right in a sense. But if you look at it from another angle, I want to be a writer more than I want to be an engineer, so maybe engineering is a distraction. Or maybe all this is a distraction and I should instead be living with natives in South America telling them about God's love. The list is endless when it comes to stuff that I should be doing instead of the things I should be doing now. I guess distractions are everywhere.

And that would mean that there are good distractions too. I think that the whole point of life is to find which distractions are worth pursuing, weighing the pros and cons of each. Maybe we won't always make the right decisions, but at least we'd be happy with the ones we did make.

And you won't find yourself wasting your time on Greek mythology...which, by the way, is totally awesome way to waste time.

2 comments:

  1. YES. I AGREE. Exhibit A: http://ersatzeloquence.blogspot.com/2010/09/dearest-readers-i-have-confession-to.html

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