I'm the kind of person who multi-tasks all the time. I clean while I'm cooking, look through mail when I'm watching television, cover the stairs with things that need to go up on my way. I've always been this person. If I'm not doing three things at once, I'm wasting valuable time. I nag my husband all the time. He is incapable of pouring a drink and having a conversation with someone. His brain just doesn't work this way. I hear it's a male thing but I always hated these kind of generalizations; you know, that whole male vs female brain thing that everyone is always bitching about? Cop out! But my son has started to do it too and it worries me that this particular stereotype may just be turn out to be true. I mean, seriously! I've been over here cooking dinner for four people, while cleaning up toys, simultaneously spinning this plate on a stick and talking about what happened last night on True Blood and you can't get dressed telling me about your day? Rank amateur.
However, I have recently found that my gift for juggling mundane tasks is not entirely impervious. I can't multi-task at all when it comes to writing. There! I said it! I have a multi-tasking weakness. You see, I've found in the past year or so, I simply can not write worth a damn the same day I am refurbishing and repainting my bathroom. I can't flesh out a chapter while compiling the year five scrapbook of my son's life, and I certainly can't work on prose when my heart is at Home Goods redecorating my den. When it comes to crafting something, I'm a total man! I've got a one track creative mind.
I wonder why this is a lot now. Why my creative parts could be so wildly divergent from my everyday. They're still both me right? I'm the one behind the curtain no matter how you slice it. And still I can't change what I know to be true. Multi-tasking is my part-time gift, requiring absolutely no muse. So today I write and my bathroom lies dormant. Tomorrow I paint and my characters wait until my faux-finish masterpiece is complete. Someone call the Devil! I'm definitely going to need to bargain for more time; while also setting the table, making the bed and doing a few loads of laundry that is...