I’m having trouble with Being Present. I find that whatever I’m doing, I’m somewhere else in my head.
This isn’t good. It causes a lot of household problems, because I don’t remember what I started out to do. The only time I am fully engaged is when I’m reading a book. Even reading the New Yorker, I manage to think about something else, or just think about myself trying to take an interest in the article I’m not interested in.
I’m still doing physical therapy for the broken hip, and today I noticed that while I was exercising my leg, I was thinking about my son’s elbow.
I want to be present, but I’m absent.
Is this due to old age, or all the drugs, or the result of the Internet destroying my attention span? How can I learn to be present without getting the tattoo-reminder?
If you’d rather think about Rumer Willis than my existential malaise, try watching her lesbian kiss from some TV show where she plays a lesbian (ha!) and looks just like her dad.
I don’t think we can blame it on age or teh Internets because I’ve always been this way.
i don’t know what’s so wrong with the combination of bruce and demi.
first time i watched her act was on csi ny. she was mugged and thrown on a wall. And they made a slow mo shot on how her face smashed on the wall and gawd it was so horrible. Not the face smashing scene but her chin and jaw, and lips and nose so close up and you think, whatever happened to this girl? demi and bruce for parents…. poor rumer. i don’t know. demi must have slept with jay leno.
I wonder where your displaced mind wandered off while you were watching this lesbian kiss…
WendyB – Really?? How do you get anything done, then??
Denise – There’s definately some Leno in there.
dust – Hahahaha! I was thinking, Rumer’s heart isn’t in this kiss. Neither is her tongue. (these are my exact thoughts, verbatim)
Her chin terrifies me.
This stupid ugly annoying girl I knew (AKA my husband’s ex girlfriend) Has “breathe” tattooed on her wrist.
Really bitch? You’re going to forget? Pfft.
Honestly? Lady Wolf?
Meditation.
And that’s coming from someone
with the secret to Sweet Sperm.
If you want more info, I know
a great technique that has
no hippy shit attached.
XuXu
http://www.frenchshelter.blogspot.com
Only 20 More Followers To Go!
(Doesn’t anyone want sperm to be sweet?
Theirs or others??)
I’m the same, my mind always wanders probably the only exception is writing scripts and reading books or watching a film.
I still get things done but I waste a lot of time too.
Actually I just remembered I was worse when I was younger, forever daydreaming doing nothing but thinking of stuff. So actually I’m marginally better now.
You’re right Sister, they kissed like 8 year old kids. She inherited her mothers acting skills, poor girl, can not act fully clothed.
One could just stick her in a glass case in a museum under the exhibit titled Nepotism. There is no other way she’d have got work/swag in Hollywood with that nonexistent talent (ok, Mom wasn’t a great actress either) or that face. Not that I have anything against non-nosejobbed faces, Anjelica Huston is one of my favourite people to look at- but this one is just boring as fuck.
I’m well-known in real life fir Being Absent, too.
It could be a combination of stress and the drugs. There is an old saying that when you notice it yourself it’s okay – when other people notice its a problem.
Now how does she read that tattoo to remind herself? she’d have to lift up an arm and twist her head around, her chin would surely get in the way…
She belongs to Tori Spelling’s category of beauty.
I have to deviate from the topic for a minute. Oh my god. I just visited Atlantis Home and saw more of those revolting beetle bugs and the octopus necklace – it looks like a piece of lumpy metal POO on a necklace!
I had to laugh at your comment. I can’t believe Judy let it be posted? I thought she screened comments! Anyhow – totally hilarious all the people saying they love the belts and are willing to part with $600 for one. Why. I do not get it at all. I wouldn’t pay 10 cents for one of those belts. Imagine how much it would weigh as well?! They would be heavy to wear and totally impractical.
As for Rumer. Being present is good but sometimes the present sucks so it is more fun to think of other things.
When I was 19 I was sent on a tough-love Outward Bound type wilderness experience. After 10 hours of bushwhacking and climbing mountains, if you asked one of the “sherpas” when we could rest or eat, they’d answer “Be here now,” so I start to have horrible flashbacks just looking at that tattoo.
Welcome to Short Attention Span Theater, pretty much my world. As to Rumer, ack she really does look like Dad. Who btw was a total prick when I worked with him in his bartending days. All I ever want to do is smack that stupid grin off his face. (okay maybe punch it off) Asshole.
I have the same issues. The only time i am absolutely here and now is when i am reading. It doesn’t really matter what. Except I am not really here and now, but there and wherever the book brings me.
I think I have always been like that. I got lots and lots of detention for daydreaming in elementary School
It is not good for getting things done and not killing yourself in a kitchen accident, but for the most part i live with it. It gets MUCH worse when i am stressed out, and I imagine your recent traumas qualify as super stress. I mean… who wants to hang round some where that sucks right?
So i guess I am not much help.Getting enough sleep helps, and being able to do things a bit at a time, and switch tasks when my attention wanders. I like to have a pile of projects to switch too when i go visit fairy land in my head…..
So i can’t really solve it for you. sorry.
I am pretty sure all that is more helpful than a side boob tattoo though.
I’m not certain about the Sweet Sperm thing, but XuXu’s meditation advice might be a good idea. I always liked how Vonnegut wrote about it even though he didn’t do it himself, or only did it once. So maybe just thinking about meditation is the way to go, just don’t get distracted by actually doing it.
Also, your lack of Being Present is due to the fact that you’re not a native of Papua New Guinea. It’s a necessary malaise of civilization. Your best bet is to embrace it and “own” your Absence.
@Romeo “Your best bet is to embrace it and “own” your Absence.”
Do you think this will work when my deadline is past due and I have writer’s block? “Um sorry Editor person, I’m embracing and owning my absence at the moment.”
I’ll put in another vote for meditation. It need not be a Buddhist thing, you can just practice meditation on its own.
I’m the same way, I’ve always been like this. As a writer I think it’s invaluable. I come up with more good shit in my car on the way to work than when I sit down and try to write.
It took Buddha 1 million and 80 years to be fully present in the moment and not veer off. I think he said the mind is like a monkey.
“The monkey mind is always jumping from one thing to another, it’s the mind that is always conceiving and thinking, living in concepts and continually reacting with desire and aversion to the experiences that we encounter.”
So, it seems to be universal to some degree, this wondering, unfocused mind. Training the mind to quiet down does take practice; however, on the other hand it’s so entertaining when it wonders from topic to topic. I try to meditate focusing on my breath (for two minutes twice a day) but I do this for health reasons (It actually keeps my blood pressure a tab bit lower).
Watching TV or your computer screen does have a stimulating (as in not positive effect) on your brain. Plus I won’t get into toxic environments (my office building), EMFs (my office and home, and all those cell towers, cell phones, and wireless cafes), overfed and undernourished bodies (the four food groups: caffeine, sugar, meat, and wheat anyone?), too much stress in people’s lives, pollution, not enough quality sleep . . . blah, blah, blah. Cumulative distractions and stimulants that disrupt the mind (don’t heal the body).
Horrid aesthetic placement of tattoo. And most illogical if one needs to be reminded to “be present.”
I don’t know a woman alive who doesn’t have at least a million thoughts, obligations and rants running through her head at all times. We all just have too much on our plates! Meditation helps much more than a tattoo that you’d have to contort yourself to read and be reminded. And for me, weed does a great job keeping me focused too – but that is often my remedy for various flavors of malaise.
is it wrong to think that rumer’s dad is hot-ish? even though he’s full of crap and his political convictions suck big time?
but he has nothing on tom ford. hehehe.
I hate when people say they get tattoos to “remind themselves” of stuff.
I’ve watched enough LA Ink to know that is the favorite excuse for getting ANY tattoo. Even if it is a demon vagina with snake coming out of it or whatever, they will always say it is “marking an important moment” in their lives.
Can’t we just all agree that people get tattoos because they are vain and just want to get tattoos?
I like the idea of poss. combination of stress & meds. Also – and I mean this in a non-snarky kind of way – because you’re super intelligent, no really – I think that makes it worse. The stress & anxiety gets your mind on this endless crap-loop and trying to think in a different direction is damn near impossible. The meditation is a great idea, too.
What meds are you still on? Any opiates for pain? Any benzos (Valium, Xanax, Ativan, etc.) for anxiety? Long-term use of those, esp. the opiates, will play total havoc with your concentration & motivation & all that shit. Plus those effects from opiates can last way long after you stop. (This I know from unpleasant shitty personal experience.) No, I am not a medical person, nor do I play one on TV. You’re okay or you couldn’t write as coherently about not being present. It’s just that your current present is not being present, kind of thing.
I have terrible issues focusing. I blame our culture, magazines and the internet. Who needs to focus when things are made small and easy to digest for the short attention span? Anyways, I’d like to improve this. Where I use to be able to write pages upon pages, now I can hardly write two paragraphs without pausing to think about something stupid and completely unrelated to the subject at hand. Ridiculous.
“ignore chin”
Whenever I don’t look at a screen for a 18+ hours, I find it much easier to be present. (And to sleep!)
I suspect many of us are not very interested in being present because our bodies are not that comfortable. Isn’t it better to be in our disembodied, Cornified ™ heads?
Painting, Yoga and Meditation helps me a lot, though I am still easily distracted when I am not practicing. Like Wendy, I have always been this way, and it helps me to have several things going on at once.
We do live in a world full of distractions. Our culture in particular, is set up to look outside reality, and get caught up in drama, not unlike the post you did about the Angelina Jolie Brad Pit crap and other things like it.
Being present is not always fun, in fact, it can be painful.
It’s funny that I think of things while I am at my job that fuel my creative life. I have taken to writing poetry on post-it notes, postcards, and word documents. At home when I sit down to do poetry “work” – nothing.
Distraction, not always bad.
You’re gonna have to get the tattoo. It’s the only way some people remember things….like LiLo who will forget to breathe unless she looks at her “breathe” tattoo.
Ipso Facto.
Could the tattoo be a directive for her lovers?
(Bad cow, bad!)
This is the best I’ve ever seen Rumer. Must be the camera shot shortening her chin. Yes, the combo of Bruce and Demi is less than satisfactory. But don’t those two have enough bucks to buy their girls plastic surgery? Come on ‘rents, step up to the plate!
Of course, who the hell names their kid Rumer and expects a good outcome?
Oh, and I think what she meant with the tattoo is “Buy me a present” as in “a trip to the plastic surgeon.” The tattoo artist was an idiot and misinterpreted her deep meaning before he inked her.
Bessie the Cow is the New Hero!
I wonder what Young Rumer makes of Mummy’s surgery?
Does she like Ashton? Or not?
Well, since you’re talking “wisdom” Sis…
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1831461
And this should help you with your reading:
You know who else depresses me…. The daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. So sad Rumer and this girl, most gorgeous mothers ever and they look like their dads. Thats how you know there is no god, or if there is one, he is a mean bastard.
Oh dear, she really does look like her dad…
Wow, People are mean.
Ce n’est pas une femme pour toi!