little revelation

I have felt harried recently and generally, and haven't been able to put my finger on why, exactly. My mom, a therapist, insists that despite the fact that our bodies can do many things at once, our brains are only able to focus singularly. As an expert multi-tasker, I have debated this with her, but here, mid-week, following several weeks of feeling a low-grade sense of constant rushing, I’ve concluded that she (and scientific evidence) may be right.

My problem, I think, isn’t that I’m doing too much but that I'm doing too much at once. I text while I drive. I talk on the phone while I grocery shop, or while I’m making breakfast, or while I'm trying to herd people out the door. I organize my calendar while I watch Modern Family. And where I come down at the end of the day is feeling insane (code for feeling like I'm not doing anything *well* because, actually, I'm not).

So here sitting in a hot parking lot waiting for it to be late enough to walk into the doctor’s office, I am parked and doing only this. And I feel a little better.