The F Word

good or bad?

After a long and busy day in the studio, I sat across from my husband at the dinner table, sighed, and said, "I've been flitting all day. I got a lot done, but nothing feels complete because I flit from one thing to another."

Flitting that's the F Word that is ruining my day. Or is it?

Over the past few days (weeks, months?), while continuing to flit from one thing to another, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this habit of mine. Flitting has a bad rap. It's the opposite of focus, which we all believe is the key to getting things done. I'm always telling my readers, my students, my kids, and yes, myself, to focus, so I really wanted to get to the root of what I consider to be a problem.

First of all, is it a problem? By whose definition? If, in the end, I am getting things done, then where's the problem? Am I feeling bad because flitting is not focus and is contrary to what all the experts say is the "right way" to accomplish your goals? If I succeed, meet my deadlines, accomplish what I set out to do, then being a flitter is not a bad thing. So why does it bother me?

I trace this behavior back to the days when I was just starting out on my quest to be an artist. In the beginning, when I made the decision to make creativity a priority in my life, I really had to struggle to fit art into my day. Realizing that long uninterrupted hours were not going to magically appear, I used every spare 5 or 10 minutes I could.

As a mother of six, and later a caregiver for my aging parents, particularly my late-in-life blind father, I spent 2/3s of my life responding to a myriad of situations as they arose. Interruptions ranged from sibling quarrels and skinned knees to carpool and homework questions, calls for assistance for fallen parents, ER visits, and every little thing in between. React, respond, resolve. Concentrated focus time was rarely an option.

Yet now, in my recently acquired, relatively interruption-free life, I find myself following the same behavior. My day goes something like this:

Intended action - write my Substack post

1. sit down to write after spending a few hours or days deciding what to write
2. stop to look up a quote
3. as long as I'm online, check my email, see an order for TAP
4. hop over to PayPal, print out the packing slip, and get up to get a pack of TAP to mail out
5. walk by art table and think: I'll just put another layer on this journal page so I'm making progress on it
6. working on that gives me another idea
7. gather a few things for the new idea while it's fresh
8. discover something that needs to be put away
9. while putting it away, stumble on another incomplete project
10. pull that out and make room for it on my art table
11. decide I need to organize my work space and do a little organizing rearranging
12. remember that I was working on my post, so go back to it
13. recheck my email before I begin, so I'm not distracted wondering if that email I'm expecting is there
14. remember I need to write that article
15. go get the quilts for the article
16. get an idea of something else I can add to it if I can find it

and on and on and on until, with deadline looming, I settle in and

17. complete newsletter

Let's not forget that any art takes time to percolate, to noodle and mull over, to ponder the what-ifs and evaluate the why-nots. As Thomas Merton says, imagination needs time to browse. Expecting to start and finish something in one concentrated block of time is counter-productive to the spirit of art.

My question to you is: was any of this wasted time? All actions were necessary for each thing I was working on. So what are the disadvantages of working piecemeal (def. unsystematic partial measures taken over a period of time)?

Isn't this type of piecemeal behavior endemic among women? Is it unwise, unhealthy, and unfulfilling? Is it because we always put others first? Or are we really superwomen, able to juggle it all, constantly monitor, and make course corrections when needed?

As homemakers, parents, caretakers, volunteers, employed women with part-time dreams, we often get to the end of the day and feel that we have nothing to show for it. Even the meal or the cake we created has disappeared. But I know that if, at the end of the day, we made a list of every action we took that day, we would be mighty proud of all of our accomplishments. These "little things" add up.

If we are getting everything we wish/need/want to get done, albeit in our own time, is flitting wrong? What say you? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Comment below, share this, ask your friends, and let’s get a conversation going.

Quotes of the Week

I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the appletree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling me.
Richard Le Gallienne

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
Virginia Wolff

Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
Saul Bellow