# Chapter 123

So many things compete for your attention in the West. And now we are in the Advent season, and there is more competition than ever, both in the church and in the stores and in our families and jobs still need to be done with excellence, and the phone is not working properly and the bike needs to be picked up and the repairman hired and the neighbors have COVID and need us to fetch somethings for them and feed them something since they all three are sick, and youngest daughter is pregnant and needs extra love and help and band practice is today and the parental needs attention and . . . you get the idea. In fact your life looks very much like this and worse, because you have been dealing with it far longer than I have, since I have been living the American lifestyle only these last two months and a bit.

I understand and sympathize. Trying to find a spot to think and do deep work of any type is nearly impossible. I even put it on the calendar and of course it got pushed right off again! The end result is that I find myself leading a rushed, fractured, shallow existence, one continuous stream of urgent stuff competing with other urgent stuff and never the important. We need a better plan than this. While I can enjoy the rushed fractured shallow for a while and all the dopamine it floods your system with, in the end it is not what I am aiming for, nor will this work for you, if you want to create something valuable and life-giving.