A (Temporary) Loss of Focus…..

Over the last few months I’ve noticed an odd lack of focus – on reading. Part of it, I’m sure, is to do with the unseasonably fine summer weather. After all this is England and the last thing we expect in the summer is day after day of hot dry weather. It’s not affecting my sleep as much as I thought it would but it did have an effect. Then there’s the dry and the dust which effects my eyes. Not so easy to read when your eyes are watering (not taking in to account my hay fever).

On top of that I’ve been spending quite a bit of extra time on YouTube watching US News shows, bits of gaming videos, motivational videos (I kid you not) and anything else that attracts my notice for a few minutes. It’s all rather addictive once you get going! Finally I have a new game which is eating up quite a bit of my time – although mostly late at night when I’m too tired to actually read but it’s not bed time yet. The game is No Man’s Sky (Next) which was half price on Steam and one of the guys alerted me to the fact. So I downloaded it…… 30+ gaming hours later I’m just finding my feet (on alien worlds) and am really enjoying it. I can’t play it much until later in the week because, until Wednesday, I’m playing Company of Heroes 2 with my primary gaming partners. So, what happens on/from Wednesday? The latest expansion to World of Warcraft drops….. Now normally I’d be all over that and would have been spending the last few weeks getting ready. But as I now have NMS(N) I feel that I just can’t devote the time to TWO open ended games. So I had to choose and I chose to explore an entire friggin’ UNIVERSE in a completely new game rather than continue in a game I had been playing for the last 5+ years. Seemed eminently sensible.

Compared to some people (several regulars here!) I don’t read that much or that fast. My aim is to average 50 pages a day which I do (or did until recently) 95% of the time. These days’ 50 pages is a struggle even at weekends – although I was impressed that I read 100+ pages on Sunday. Taking that into account I thought that my reading drought (something I experience periodically) was coming to an end. I do hope so! One very noticeable effect of all of this is the reduction of my review pile – presently sitting at zero. This almost never happened in the past 10 years and has now become the norm. I expect to have a book to review on Thursday but presently I’m not too sure. Of course I’m not going to bust a gut to finish it quickly just to be able to review it for you guys (and any lurkers out there) but I have temporarily increased my lunch breaks and am making more of an effort to read on the bus on the way into work. That helps.

What I essentially need to do is focus more. These days I seem to be particularly easily distracted after 4, 5, 10 pages and will do something else for 30, 45, 60 minutes before coming back to the book. I need to concentrate more. It’s a habit I seem to have (hopefully temporarily) misplaced….. and speaking of which I’ll go red for 30 minutes (at least) before bed……