I’m cutting out distractions and moving toward sanity in 2018.

Must resist the call of podcasts…

It started when I broke the sandwich press. Apparently, you can’t rinse those things under a running faucet.

But I was so tired from the day. I’d already done two loads of dishes, I had looming deadlines, and I was so damn tired that I wanted to just duck upstairs and sleep forever.

I didn’t focus on my tasks. I didn’t count on getting the internal mechanism wet. It never entered my mind.

That was the entire problem. In the past few years, I’d developed a habit of distracting myself. Listening to music, watching movies, chatting with friends, following every little rabbit hole impulse I had to explore something… silently tearing down my ability to focus.

Now, for the sake of my belongings and my relationship with my sandwich-loving boyfriend, I had to interrogate that impulse.

It’s about avoiding confrontation.

The first time I remember falling down a distraction hole as an adult, I was a freshman in college.

It was a week before my Chemistry 101 final. I was terrified of not doing well on that exam. But more than anything, I was terrified of what doing poorly would mean.