Focus

When working on his inventions, Nikola Tesla was wholly oblivious of people around him.  So singular was his focus, he sometimes neglected sleeping and worked until he literally collapsed from exhaustion.  Nothing distracted him.

I would like to make the claim that my focus on projects is the same, but of course that would be false.  When, for example, working on a project at my cabin (where literally dozens of other unfinished tasks can be found by simply turning my head), I tend to bound from project to project in the course of a single day.  All the while, my mind is picking up this, dropping that.  I do have short periods of intense concentration.  Generally, those are when I am looking for a tool or a specific type of screw in my voluminous stacks of building supplies.

Over the weekend, I spent part of a day working on a couple of ongoing projects at my cabin.   For one of the tasks, I had to use my miter saw to cut a length of 2 x 4.  Not wanting to spew sawdust all over the place inside the cabin, I hauled the saw just outside the lower level door, near my truck, to make the cut.

Off I went after that to do another one-hundred chores.

A couple hours later, I needed to retrieve a pair of pliers from my truck.  I plodded down the stairs to the lower level, dragged across the floor, and opened the lower entry door.

Brighter outside light fell over me.  There in the light, stood a dark and sinister shape.

Wolverine!  Right at my door! 

I gasped, froze.

A sudden calm came over me as my focus on the dark shape cleared.  It was the miter saw I dragged outside the door two hours earlier.

--Mitchell Hegman