life as a focaphobe

I have self-diagnosed focaphobia. And seals aren’t the issue. I can’t focus on anything—I forget that I’m making toast until I’m burning toast; I forget that I’m supposed to be getting ready for work, not painting; I forget that I’m studying for the GRE until I suddenly find myself with a French book; I forget that I’m peeling apples, not browsing music online; I forget that I’m reading one book until I’m almost finished with another; I get off the metro at Tobalaba when I was meant to transfer to the green line at Baquedano.
In the grand scheme of things, I suppose, at least I’m uni-directional, if not entirely focused. I said I would go to college; I went. I wanted to live in a Spanish-speaking country; I’m living in Chile. I studied linguistics; I’m teaching ESL. And I want to continue studying linguistics, so I suppose I will. But life on the daily level for me is brimming with indecision and random acts of negligence. Take now for example: against my better judgement, I opted out of a night of outings with friends because I have a class early tomorrow morning. (Damn Saturday classes. Silly things, those.) And—it’s not that I’ve forgotten—but I’ve been so side-tracked by things like facebook, paperwork, cleaning out my fridge, washing dishes, compiling new playlists on my ipod, that I still haven’t planned tomorrow morning’s class. (Trouble ahead.)
Ironically, I spent several hours today sitting in one place, very focused on painting a wall (on a canvas). Several hours. That is completely out of place. My daily routine doesn’t allow for things like that. -- It’s nice. I enjoy painting. But I’m not very good so there’s nothing really to show for it in the end. Just a bunch of shades in shapes that look vaguely like something that might exist in a disproportionate version of our world. But if I could somehow bring a bit of the attention-span I have for painting into my everyday life—maybe eventually the burn smell in the kitchen would dissipate and the milk would stop going off. My cucumbers might not even get moldy anymore. I would get to class on time. And I imagine I might even get into grad school and do quite well there. But…since I don’t intend to be a mad scientist or a starving artist, I think I may have to put some afán into getting over this focaphobia in the nearish future.