Grass is always greener

The first three days of the week I tried to get in a full day’s work for Preventable Surprises each day. I found this extraordinarily difficult. Forcing myself to sit in a room by myself for more than five hours a day is feeling a bit like torture. It’s not just having no one to talk to or brainstorm with, it’s also my decreased ability to focus for any length of time. Part of this may be getting older, but part of it is also the corrosive effect of social media. Keeping up with more than one e-mail account, Facebook, Twitter, blog. My attention span for work seems limited to 20 minutes at a time, at best. It’s really frustrating.

I’m beginning to think I need to look for full-time work in London. That’s ground central for responsible investing and climate change. I’m leery of how I will hold up in a full-time job surrounding by young, fired-up whippersnappers. But working part-time on my own isn’t great either. I think when you’re doing work that is essentially idealistic--working for change--it’s awfully hard to stay motivated when you are by yourself every day. Working on a team provides a sense of mission that I lack here in my converted bedroom with my snoring dog.

I’m disappointed with myself that I’m not more self-directed and more self-disciplined and more ambitious. But the lack of deadlines or strategy or direction have sapped my energy. When I was a newspaper reporter, I did the deadline dance every day. When I was a financial writer, I had projects assigned to me with specific deadlines. Now that I need to assign myself projects and deadlines, I’m waffling. I did elevate two blogs this week--I’m not sitting around doing nothing. But I’m not working at the level I’m capable of and that’s frustrating.
It’s also frustrating that, after 30-plus years in the 9-5 world, I escaped, only to want to get back in my chains. How perverse is that?
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