Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Details

"There was a building with multi-colored cubes," I told Adam as we walked down the street in Seoul, "and another building with a curved roof - it looked like it was rusting.

"I was looking out the window," I explained after a pause. "My head hurt so badly and I couldn't get cooled down so I bent over the vent by the window and tried to find a focal point to focus past the pain.

"I did not work," I continued my monologue. "But it was slightly distracting to watch the cars park and people walk."

Being a very 'all or nothing' sort of girl, I tend to notice and remember everything - the way the wind blew suit jackets open and ties askew as people moved briskly through the alley behind my hotel in Korea; the woman who smoked and avoided eye contact with all passersby - or little to nothing.

But I've lately wanted to notice nothing and am paid to track down everything. There are several projects that - while admittedly not difficult - are positively dripping with details. And I'm trying to catch them with my lists and emails and follow up calls. And it's not going badly! If there were 2 projects, it'd be easy. 3 would be reasonable. But 5 is starting to feel overwhelming. I wake up (not often - God bless melatonin) wondering if I ordered enough workbooks or reviewed that last manuscript or practiced the newest presentation or signed that contract or returned that voice mail.

So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed - contentedly so, but still buried under a mountain of post-its, each containing some small but critical piece of the overall puzzle.

1 comment:

microbiologist xx said...

It took me a minute, but I finally found that building with the curved roof. :) I notice nothing. I'm usually so lost in thought that I often don't remember actually getting from point A to point B and at work I can get so focused that I don't hear others talking around me. If you all or nothing, then I might be just nothing.

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