Tuesday 13 November 2012

Multitasking

Hey, been a while.

Multitasking is something that we women go on about, it's revered, a skill which is honed, and perfected by the modern woman. I sometimes fricking resent those suffragettes! I was cursing them a little this week...

We don't HAVE it all do we? We DO it all.

ANYWAY, by the by, this isn't a rant for the ladies. It's for any parent.
I watch the Duck sometimes and have to admire her lack of multitasking. If she is eating her dinner and I switch the TV on, she stops eating to gawp.  If she is walking and then decides to pick a flower, she has to stop. The legs stop working while she has to take this in.
If she has to put on her own trousers, there is no way she can talk, or remain composed. When stirring cake mixture she has to concentrate so hard that her brow nearly meets her chin, and she has been known to insist everything ever must stop so that she can have a poo. I've got to admire it.

Her dad and I, are totally different beings. While I cook dinner I am scanning my emails, filling the dishwasher, listening to the radio, thinking about work, compiling a mental to-do list and keeping an ear out for impending toddler doom. HE is reading a bedtime story, feeding the fish, folding the washing (good boy), turfing the cat out of the washing bin for the hundredth time and shouting at me to remember to get something out of the freezer for dinner tomorrow.

In the late evenings I hate to admit we sit in front of a film, internet surfing, xmas shopping, eating tea, holding hands intermittently (how sweet), checking reviews of tomorrow's film, googling THAT actor (who the hell is that?) and randomly discussing life.None of which we do efficiently. What happened? Who died? Oh but I already bought that! What's your name again?

I can't help but think toddlers have it so right. We should be concentrating on one thing at a time. It's so much better that way. If I am reading the Duck a story and totally immerse myself in it, regardless of the bloody mice being dragged in the back door, and the washing machine timer beep beep beeping, I can enjoy it so much more. And so does she. It's obvious but sooooooo hard to achieve.

It's the same with taking photos of everything. Maybe just experience it? The memory is good enough.

Maybe it's better NOT to multitask sometimes? Concentrate, be mindful, and all that hippy shit.