Greetings from Prairie Life Fitness! It’s arm day, and in my breaks I thought I’d jot this post. It’s not ideal, but that new mattress I told you about has given me a new appreciation for sleep. So what if I have to type this post from my iPhone screen? So what if I’m distracted? I’m multitasking!

Most of us learned long ago that if you’re doing anything more complex than breathing through your nose, then you probably shouldn’t be trying to do anything else at the same time. This is how “friend” gets autocorrected to “flesh”, extremely unfortunate in the case of “I really like your________”, and how more and more car accidents happen. We need to pay far more attention to what we’re doing. Excuse me a moment while I do some curls.

Yesterday was a very productive day for me. I cleaned my work bench and set up my fly tying vice. I mowed the lawn, edged, and trimmed the hedges. I checked a bunch of wine into the cellar. I sprayed for spiders. I got my grades submitted. I spent time with my kids. I took a long walk with the family. I hung three pictures. And I interviewed seven people, two of whom I hope to hire later today. And I ended it sharing wine with Sonja and our neighbors. It was busy and productive. It was also linear, and looking back, I attribute most of the productivity to focusing on one thing at a time. Pardon me now, the dip rack is waiting.

Our friends had watched out kids while Sonja and I conducted the interviews along with our partner. When we got home, we shared a glass of wine with them and chatted. The wine, a 2015 Chateauneauf-du-Pape called Domaine Chante Cigale, is one we’ll be bringing into Nebraska soon. It feels as if it is made for an American palate, with firm tannins and notes of graphite lacing a fruit-driven wine with little trace of Bret or barnyard, little to indicate its precise AOC, yet a great deal to like. Our friends loved it, as did we, and while it drinks well now it is clearly age worthy. It’s also very reasonably priced. I suspect I’ll be drinking more of this in the future. Push up time!

If you’re thinking to yourself: “this isn’t his best blog post,” just remember that multitasking is a myth, and take comfort in the fact that not only my writing but also my exercise is suffering for the fact that the two are in direct competition for the focus of my tiny brain. From here, I’m at cross country practice, then teaching, then writing, and finally in a meeting before I get home tonight. In all of those environments I hope to be focused solely on the task at hand. Thanks for reading, as always. Now I need to go climb into the iron maiden.

Cheers to focus,

Mark