a need for focus

kristina suggested that we do a week of blurry shots on across ø/öresund. she's so good at finding ways to get out of the doldrums brought on by a too-long and too-slowly-waning winter (in fact, she's been doing a whole series on it on her blog of late). and it's interesting how difficult i found it yesterday to go out with my lens on manual focus and allow myself to purposely take unfocused shots. of course i take shots all the time that aren't perfectly focused, but to do so intentionally is something different. at first, i had to also take every shot focused as well as the unfocused one and then i realized that was arguably a symptom of my growing obsessive compulsive disorder (put the pens back in color order, people), and so i took a whole bunch of totally unfocused shots and didn't allow myself to take a focused companion. really weird how difficult and awkward it felt at first. like any new thing, i suppose. but it got a little bit easier as i went along.

and it's interesting how this little assignment underlines exactly how i'm feeling this week - unfocused. i have so much to do that it's really quite silly. i think it's the waiting. we still don't know whether they will accept our offer (i guess the dog sled has not made it to the canadian arctic circle to ask the one party as of yet) on the house and husband's still waiting to see the nitty gritty details of his two job offers. and waiting makes you unfocused. there's so much i could and should be doing, but instead, i spend hours making mosaics of my flickr faves, drooling over heather's home on apartment therapy and stirring up a mushroom and fennel risotto. yeah, i got some laundry done, but once it's in, it requires little from me but the switch from washer to dryer. i could have been packing books or sorting out the attic, but i didn't. and i'm sure that later, when i'm pressed for time, i'll regret it.

spud and bee and blanca got together in london for mini blog camp on sunday and they had a discussion of life plans. blanca has one. spud and bee do not. i think a little bit that my lack of focus is because the life plan of moving to a farm with space for a large garden and a couple of horses that we developed over the past year is actually starting to come true. at least on the meta-level, of course, the details are to be worked out and acted upon. but once you fulfill your life plan, what's the next step? you need a new life plan to replace the old one that came true. i think the picture above is the perfect metaphor for how i feel right now. some bits in focus and some not so much. i need to get those focused bits out of the way and zero in on the fuzzy ones, developing them further. and it leaves me feeling restless and impatient.