Focus

I've been thinking about focus lately. Where we focus our thoughts, our time, our energy. What we focus on when we look in a mirror, or at another person. How we focus on what makes us happy, or what we think will make us happy, or what we worry will make us unhappy.

More than that, though, I've been thinking about how our focus shifts, imperceptibly, over time. (You can call it growth but it's really just change.) I think about all the things I've focused on in the past, that hold no allure for me today. And I think about all the things I'm interested in now, that two years ago I never even thought about.

This past month I've been focused on work, which is notable only in that I promised myself I wasn't going to do that anymore. That is to say, I still have to work, but I don't want it to dominate my life like it has in the past. Unfortunately, given a particularly intractable database problem, and I was regularly skipping sleep to work on it. (As I write this, I have been up for about 40 hours.)

Ironically, my company is not happy I'm even doing this in the first place -- they say it was out of scope for the project, but my company is so dysfunctional I'm not really bothered by what they think. However, having the company not be supportive really puts what I've given up over the past month into context, and reminds me why I decided 3 years ago to focus on life instead of work.

Perhaps its time I renewed that vow. That, and update my resume.