The Sprague Lab

First, yesterday’s photo of the day, taken while I waited for Jared to go figure out the issue with the new car. I love my 50mm f/1.8. Love.it. That delicious shallow depth of field. Mmm. :)

I got a really apt message from my Daily OM newsletter today, called Energetic Investments (by the way, I totally recommend signing up for this free daily newsletter. I love it) This section especially struck me:

As modern life makes a wealth of information and opportunities available to us, we may find ourselves torn between a wide variety of interests and projects. Our excitement may entice us to try all of them at once, but doing so only diffuses our energy, leaving us unable to fully experience any of them. Like an electrical socket with too many things plugged into it, we may be in danger of overheating and burning out. But if we can choose one thing at a time to focus all of our attention upon, we can make the most of our life-force energy, engaging ourselves fully in the moment so that it can nurture us in return.

 We may never know which of our interests is best suited to our abilities and heart’s desires unless we give it a proper chance. By being fully present with all that we are and all that we have, we can experience each choice fully and make the most fulfilling choices for our energetic investments.

 
But I am definitely taking multitasking to the extreme. And by extreme I mean I really think it’s whittled my attention span away to the point where I have a hard time even focusing on a single task at the computer for more than a few minutes. Some other thought floats to the surface and that little inner butterfly goes, “Hm.. I wonder what that is.. I wonder what would happen if… Oh! I remember, I wanted to…) and off we go again, leaving a trail of open browser tabs and unfinished photo editing, unfinished purchases (not to mention that little ache of sadness at 4p.m. that naptime is over and nothing is done) in our wake. How can I get off this train of thought?

I love this idea of being fully present. It sounds awesome. I really think I do that when I’m looking through the lens of my camera, but here at the computer? No such luck. Looks like I need “focus” as my word of the month again. :P

<Fast-forward 9 hours>

(EDIT: I wrote this at 3:00 p.m. It is now almost midnight and the “download” turned into a 5-hour fiasco complete with 4 uninstalls/reinstalls and a phone call to Adobe *shaking head*). Can’t blame it all on the short attention span, now, right? ;))

How a Splinter Machine Helped Me Focus

But speaking of focus. Rowen has this ability to help me appreciate small things.

First, the backstory, which I heard from Jared at dinnertime:

Apparently, Rowen came in while I was in San Francisco and told Jared that her stuffed kitty had a splinter in his paw. (Sounds like an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse we saw recently). So he said, “Let’s put him in a splinter machine to get the splinter out.” She put the kitty in her pink toy bucket, pushed imaginary buttons on the side (complete with sound effects), replicated the noises that a splinter machine should make when it’s in action, and the kitty came out splinter free. :)

Fast-forward to 7 a.m. this morning. Rowen comes in, as she always does, with an announcement. She has built a BIGGER splinter machine. (This was the first time I had heard of the splinter machine, of course, not knowing the backstory above). I didn’t think much about it until I was tucking her in for her nap this afternoon, and she showed it to me. It’s pretty freaking magical.

There you see the original pink splinter machine. Well, she has completely revolutionized the splinter removal process. As she tells it, the water goes down the blue scarf (apparently this model uses water to wash out splinters), and into the bucket where the splintery friend is. The machine does its splinter removal thing (complete with same noises), and all the splinters wash down the white pipes (the hanger there), and are collected in the green cup. Then Rowen can take the splinters and put them in the purple bag (not shown) to throw them away. Splinter free friends forever! And she was SO excited. :)

My first reaction was, “Wow! You are an amazing engineer!” so I said, “Wow! You are an amazing engineer!”

She said, “I want to be a train engineer when I grow up, because I LOOOOOVE trains!”

I pulled the blanket up as she laid down, and she said, “But you know what I love even MORE than trains? DADDY! I love him all the way to the very last solar system’s very last planet!”

And here’s a final thought from the same Daily OM:

Our attention can be pulled in many directions … But when we take the time to listen to our inner guidance and focus our thoughts on the goals that resonate the most strongly within us, the rest of the world will fade away.

Take that, computer issues, determined to keep me down! Thanks to my beautiful child and her infectious excitement, I WILL celebrate my life, and all its wonderful detail. Here’s to a splinter-free evening for all. :)