Check Your Pockets

The story goes that I had to go to Sobeys the other evening but I had to put the farm animals away first. I usually have the dogs with me so it’s often a one-handed affair. That evening, I collected one egg and put it in my shorts pocket. I finished, brought the dogs inside and headed to the store.

It wasn’t until I happened to bump into something at the store that I realized the egg in my pocket was still there and now broken. I knew exactly what it was as soon as I sensed the wetness, and I immediately regretted a few recent life decisions.

I made tracks through the aisles picking up the items I needed and by the time I got to the cashier, I was walking like an old man who’d shit his pants. Rhonda works at Sobeys so I happen to know many of the cashiers and they know me. The one in front of me asked how I was. I blurted out that I’d be better if I didn’t have a broken egg in my pocket. She offered me some paper towel but I declined, saying that what was there was contained and it would become considerably worse if I tried to scoop it out.

So I went home, asked Rhonda if she minded if I took a bath first. She asked why. I showed her. She howled with laughter. I scooped out the egg ruins and rinsed out my shorts, and underwear, and socks. She promptly told everyone who’d listen to the tale. Can’t say I blame her. I’d make hay off that sitch too. This evening, I again collected eggs prior to going to the store. Of course, she asked me to check my pockets. Can’t say I blame her for that either.

Okay, sure, that’s a funny story. I can’t deny it. I have to admit though that this isn’t the first forgotten egg smashed to goop in my pockets, and it’ll doubtlessly be the last. It’s part of the absent-minded-professor affect, I guess, but that’s also a cheap cop-out. It’s likely useful to explore why I did this, and continue to do this. And because I underthink some things and overthink others, this is as good a topic as any.

So I have to ask why this happened, right? Was I distracted with too many things going on in my head? Was I too busy thinking about the next thing I was doing to pay more attention to than the thing I was doing? Probably. So the real question is: what was I thinking when I was closing up the farm and driving to the store and doing the shopping and promptly forgetting about the egg? It’s been a busy few weeks. There’s been a lot going on. September startup at the College is a busy time of year. I was working on some major projects that had to be done. And if we want to get specific about what this time of year means to me: the zucchinis getting too big, running out of time on when to pick what, and what to do with everything. I still haven’t gotten to fixing the goat fence, it’s just patched. And the attendance tracking project at work is an ongoing series of bug fixes and tweaks, which is 100% expected but always more involved than you plan. In all of it, when I’m tired, this is soup in my mind. It’s a medley of images, where I flip from one scenario to another scenario to another scenario, trying to keep all of the balls in the air and keep all of the vectors pointed in the right direction, if you know what I mean.

There are many kinds of soup. There’s soup at work, there’s soup at the farm, there’s soup all over my place. Wherever you look, it’s soup, soup, soup. And sometimes you don’t even have what you need to make soup. Sometimes all you have is chicken shit. And you’re forced to make chicken soup out of it. And sometimes it’s chicken shit soup.

This kind of thing happens to me all the time, especially in meetings. I find it hard to follow and stay focused when there are many voices. I end up thinking about what happens next. Often a thread of what is being discussed sends my brain chasing rabbits because the seed of thought had to be pursued, so I lose track of the main conversation. This happened yesterday in a meeting and I’ll stay generic to protect the innocent. I was lost in thought and snapped back when someone asked me a direct question. It took me a moment to reorient and thankfully I was still in the game, but I haven’t always been. I’ve been caught and called out. S’fine. It happens.

My main tactic to make sure I don’t hyperfocus on one part of the conversation and miss the rest is to actually mildly multitask, just enough cognitive stimulus to prevent me from bounding after bunnies but not so much that I get immersed in another task. Checking email? Nope, don’t do that, that’s a very bad multitasking focusing partner. For me, taking notes is almost as bad, which is why I love meeting transcription. It’s the cat’s ass, the bee’s knees, and the elephant’s elbows. AI recaps of transcripts are useful, and being able to trust that you have the transcript to derive notes is often enough to stay present in meetings. But sometimes I have to doodle, or do a sudoku or crossword, or even on some meetings, put some ambient YouTube video in a side window. Sometimes it’s just dropping questions in Notepad for later that I can add to the transcript to focus the notes with AI later. Just enough secondary activity to keep me focused.

My very ADHD wife knits while watching a YouTube picture-in-picture while playing some clicker game on the phone. The TV may or may not be on. I can’t do that, but I get the impulse that drives it.

There are many things for this. Some people fidget, some count in their heads. It isn’t always or even often about interpersonal interaction, it’s anything. Why do people play music while working? It’s a cognitive ballast tool. Flow states and all that jazz. Thankee sai, Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi.

Check your pockets.