No Focus

I was reminded the other day about our country's lack of focus.
Focus. I teach it to my students every day. I teach them what a broad focus is. I teach them how to narrow it. I teach them how to concentrate on one aspect of one thing to complete one story. They are even required to fill out a FOCUS STATEMENT, stating their focus for me clearly, before I will even let them begin a story. Yet I've got none. I thought it was just me. However, the other day I went to drop my daughter off at school and I was running a bit behind. The teacher needed to pull me aside to speak briefly with me about my little one and her lack of focus. "She is all over the place. She's under the table, she's flipping her hair, and sometimes she's just non responsive."I didn't respond. All I could focus on was the clock.What did I learn from that conversation? That we are in a world of broad focus. And we wonder why we can't accomplish shit?A former student wrote me the other day about her daughter. Same sitch. The teacher called her in to discuss the little girl's lack of FOCUS. The teacher went as far as to say, "I've never had this much problem teaching a student in my entire career." WOW.I mean, I look at the problems in my life. I 'take a peek' actually. I don't really LOOK. Because I don't REALLY want to SEE. But if I would just pick one thing to focus on, I could alleviate so much of what I consider to be problems. Example: I have a bill. It's in the thousands. I want to pay it off. But I also want to get my nails done every two weeks, take a cruise, fly to Cancun, buy a new pair of shoes and dye my hair. So I pay off a thousand and spend a thousand. NO FOCUS.Our world has no focus. I asked my students where they were when the Trade Centers went down. They all recalled their stories. One guy remembered his teacher writing a bunch of names on the board and pointing to Osama's name and saying, some people think he is responsible for this. So the world went after him...and we caught Saddam? NO FUCKING FOCUS.

I went to the kitchen for an orange yesterday. I ended up eating a bag of popcorn. NO FOCUS.I sat down here to update my IPOD and I'm blogging instead. NO FOCUS. I have a hernia. It took me 7 months to make an appointment and it's been 3 months since they diagnosed me. I need to make an appointment to have it taken care of. But I haven't of course. Perhaps I need to use the FOCUS STATEMENT method I teach my students.Broad Focus: Fix my life.Narrower: Take more time for myself and set Goals.More Narrow: Get some hobbies and go back to college.Even More Narrow: Take a dance class and a Spanish class.And my final Focus: Get my hair done.