One day on, one day off.

That has been my brain so far this week.

Today, Friday, I expected it to pack it in entirely. Instead it�s been more a case of one hour on, one hour off.

Alternating between fabulous productivity and the inability to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time. And I mean that I couldn�t concentrate on the work I was meant to be doing, any website I might be surfing because I couldn�t concentrate on work, and, by the end of the day, anything I or anyone else was saying. Tuesday was particularly bad in that regard.

While I�m as prone as anyone else to lapses in concentration, usually it�s not something that lasts for very long. So this week has been quite strange because I really did a long term check-out. Not because I couldn�t be bothered, or wasn�t motivated, or was generally procrastinating. Because I simply couldn�t concentrate even though I wanted to.

It has generally been a strange week in the office because we only had a full compliment of staff on one day. Priscilla�s been on holidays for a couple of weeks, and Kimberlance has been filling in part-time. But on Monday she wasn�t in and the Boss was taking a long weekend, so it was just Howdy and I. Sitting at our desks and working away quietly and diligently, occasionally breaking for a chat. Tuesday the Boss was back, Kimberlance was in for the morning only, and Howdy was out sick. So it was me and the Boss all day, with my brain nowhere to be found. Wednesday everyone was in. Thursday it was the Boss, Howdy and me. And today Howdy�s out on a project so it�s just the Boss and me and June, our one-day-a-week admin assistant.

It�s been very quiet all week. Maybe that�s part of the problem. Sometimes my brain reacts well to the quiet, others it really doesn�t.

Or perhaps it�s just preparing itself for this weekend. This weekend when I have to re-write and edit a vast amount of the novel I�m working on. I want to submit it to a competition, and it has to be in by the end of May and I still have a lot of work to do. Especially taking into account one weekend in May when I�ll be in another city at a wedding. And a Saturday matinee of The Producers for Mum�s birthday the week before. And a Saturday midday hair appointment next weekend.

So I really need to do most of the re-writing this weekend to give me enough time to edit and do the more simple redrafting over the next four weeks.

I originally intended to be a little decadent and book myself into a reasonably posh hotel for the weekend and just write. I even made the booking and until a couple of weeks ago was rather looking forward to it. But the deeper I�ve got into the house-hunting and the realities of how much money I need to do that properly, the more unnecessarily decadent spending $500 on a hotel room for a couple of nights seemed. Especially when Betty got invited to a wedding that will leave me with the house to myself for virtually the whole weekend. So I cancelled my hotel booking and have been psyching myself into working the whole weekend at home without being distracted.

If I have enough will power to stop buying shoes, clothes, books, CDs and DVDs until I�m back in proper budget and saving mode, and if I have enough will power to cancel my hotel booking, then I should have enough to actually sit down and do something I want to do for the weekend. (And, yes, that will power thing does have to fall down in some part of my life, and it�s clearly chosen not to apply itself to eating healthy to a sufficient extent that my jeans are tight, so it owes me in all the other areas.)

So maybe I can take my brain�s inability to focus properly this week as just its way of preparing itself to be turned on and creative all weekend. I hope. I really, really do.