Today’s Lesson: Writing while distracted results in mistakes.
I tried writing this yesterday afternoon, but got distracted. In fact, when I started, I was cooking dinner and trying to settle a fussy baby at the same time.
The prompt for this lesson was going back and reading earlier posts. I try to make sure that each one is mistake free, but every now and then I find a mistake or two (or three) and find myself going back to fix them. Yesterday, I found quite a few mistakes from Tuesday’s posts and wound up editing a few times to get them all corrected. I think the worst one was in the title that read “Liam’s Book Cub” for a couple days. My apologies to those who noticed…and even those who didn’t.
This distraction is something that I’m not quite used to. Years ago, I used to be able to sit in a quiet area and write (or knit/sew) all I wanted with few interruptions, and definitely none that were asking for “more milk,” “wash my this,” and “where’s my that?” Of course, having children changes all that. Once you have children, you’ve got to get used to doing everything at the same time. Or at least, that’s how it seems when everyone wants something and no one’s willing (or able) or help or wait. In fact, I just had a lesson in punching, bear hugs, and blowing in faces from my three-year-old…and now he’s whining for juice when I’m trying to get the rest of dinner on the stove, finish writing, and keep the baby from freaking out.
The problem is that while mothers pride themselves on their ability to multitask (and what mother can’t do about a billion things at once?), they’re really not all that efficient while juggling all their daily duties with all their children’s needs and wants. The truth is that our brains need time to switch between tasks. So, as I go back and forth between watching the news, cooking dinner, replying to my toddler, entertaining the baby, and typing, you can pretty much guarantee that my brain is never going to be fully on the task at hand. The result? Hands that move of their own accord and most likely hit letters out of order, add extra letters, or leave them out. At least I didn’t burn dinner.
I cannot promise a mistake-free post every time. I can promise that I won’t get upset if you laugh at my slip ups when they come as I’m sure a few of them will result in something funny.
p.s. I didn’t bother to count the number of times I had to use the Backspace key to fix my typos as I went.
p.p.s. I already had to come back to edit a couple things that I missed.
Mother In Training 