What I Did on my Vacation

I was not on vacation. I just wasn't writing. Life simply got a-hold of me, and that is good. Except for this: I am not a multi-tasker, and am hard-pressed to hold attention on several things at once. I have worried a lot about this over the years. What is wrong with my brain? What is wrong with me?

Perhaps nothing is wrong. Perhaps what I have been taught is "letting balls drop" may really be having tried to juggle more than I can mentally handle in the first place. I should have recognized this a long time ago. The clues were always here, especially in my reading patterns. It was never enough to read one "Black Stallion" book. I had to read them all. And then it was not enough to read all the Black Stallion books. I had to read all of Walter Farley's other books, too. The Island Stallion. Sulky Colt. Even The Great Dane, Thor. Intense focus on one thing, sometimes to the seeming exclusion of others. 

When I am performing, that's what I do. When I am teaching, that is what I do. When I was training dogs, that was the world. When I apprenticed to an herbalist, that was the world. And when other things come at me from the side, I have a hard time dealing with them. This could be a mighty mental discipline, a "being here now". It's not, alas. I wish it was. It's just me, being me. People pitch balls to me that I don't even see sometimes. I just hear the big clatter as they hit the floor!

The past month-and-change has graced me with some challenges, and some more challenges to the half-solved challenges, and it has been a rough Lent. But Easter is coming, is already here; light is very near. And so I rejoice, and praise God. And that is something I can do no matter what else is going on.

Because it's not another ball in the air. It is the air itself.