Over the last few weeks I've been pulled from north to south and east and west I've been taken aback and whisked away pushed aside felt unseen unheard and completely scattered and if it's not one thing vying for my attention it's another and every moment of quiet is a gift ready for interruption from someone asking for something and taking the very precious moment I had to take a breath from the last thing I had to do for someone else when I've even sat in meetings without a purpose that have gone on longer than they should have I've asked why and have received quizzical looks as if I am some kind of pariah after having sat in meetings and watched people do their work slowly realising that they booked the time with me so they could slow their scattered down whilst giving me things to do and my mind my heart my beating beating beating beating heart sped up and up and up and up whilst over the last few weeks I've felt so scattered like a sparrow darting from one thing to another like reading something that is a stream of someone's incomprehensible stream of consciousness a paragraph of babble an essay without punctuation or a story without an end.

Phew.

[FIRST NAME GOES HERE], our working lives go at such a pace and there is so much asking for our attention at every given moment — clients demanding, partnerships on the horizon, hungry pipelines, the board of Directors asking and expecting, employees being employees — and we are in the middle trying to hold it in the palm of our hands in some kind of eloquent dance that feels like harmony but actually looks like something else.

A comical late night television show — uncoordinated and ill-fitting.

Our days often feel like a ramble — like a paragraph without punctuation and a day without end. Each day repeating and blurring into the next with the same angst, the same revolving door, the same meeting that should've been an email, and the same demands on our time, minds and hearts when all we want to do is show up, do good and flex our creative muscle so we can say, Yup, I have value.

And we realise that most people — most of us — are simply trying to get through the day without a scratch or a bruise. Just simply trying to put one foot in front of the other without having to lay their head on the pillow with yet another feeling of defeat but to simply rest for long enough, to do our thing tomorrow.

To do it well without harm.

I ranted to a friend recently about all these things and more, as friends often do in the intimate time they spend together sharing thoughts and quibbles, ideas and sometimes fantastical musings of being someplace, somewhere, sometime else.

It's no wonder we're all scattered when we're all trying to meet a target that as we sadly realise, we have set ourselves.

I was recently asked a question that stopped my scattered ramblings, forcing me to look in the mirror and challenge my own thinking about who I am and how I lead.

It held me in its grasp and I am yet to find a clear answer.

What do you need?

[FIRST NAME GOES HERE], I sometimes read and walk through my neighbourhood on a sunny weekend afternoon. Book in hand, slowly walking through the sunshine, sometimes walking my dog at the same time — a good book, for me, is a precious thing. Time to read it in my solitude even more so.

Sometimes people walk past me and they laugh. Sometimes they make comment — something cheesy like 'it must be a good book' — and still they laugh because I am walking, and I am reading a book, as they keep walking the other way and go back to scrolling on their phones.

It's no wonder we're all scattered.

What do I need?

Time to slow down and read a good book I guess.

See you next week.