I feel myself MUCH distracted and while I might not speak of it in many circles, I have no hesitation about revealing its cause here.
It’s poverty. Poverty is very distracting.
I watched a talk by Sendhil Mullainathan on the topic of his book, Scarcity and discovered that I already suspected feelingly. That when we are struggling with money, it detracts from our ability to focus on other things. Our brains continually circle back to “How am I going to make this work?” and “Where will the money come from?”
I feel this acutely. And it’s painful because the thoughts of “how will I get what I need?” intrude on the ability to do the things I need to do in order to actually make changes, or to promote the work I already do.
I used to be able to trick myself into believing I wasn’t poor. It allowed me to proceed along As If. But with struggles coming from so many corners, I can only feel my failures and my lack. I have just a little work here and a little work there and none of it adds up to enough. It is very distracting.
The Hamlet Project 