"What looks like a wandering mind might be a mind that actually has an agenda."
If this resonates with you, what follows may help you see something about yourself.
Seeker
I can’t listen to people for long. 10 minutes in and I’m just gone. What do you think it is, honestly. Attention span? I’m on my phone too much?
Guide
Maybe. But before I guess, when do you go? Any part of a conversation, or a certain kind?
Seeker
Longer ones. When someone’s really going on about something.
Guide
Here’s my first read, and tell me if it’s wrong. A lot of people who lose focus like that are actually overwhelmed. Too much input coming in, and the checking out is your system pulling back so it doesn’t get swamped. Does that fit?
Seeker
I mean, it sounds nice. Makes me the sensitive one.
Guide
Ha. Fair.
Seeker
But no. It’s not overwhelm. When I’m the one talking I can go for an hour. I never get swamped then. I could talk forever.
Guide
Okay, so it’s specifically the receiving side.
Seeker
Yeah. And it’s not that I don’t care about them. I like these people. It’s more like, my meeting last week, someone was explaining this whole plan and I had a better version in my head almost immediately and I just sat there waiting to say it and then someone else jumped in and by the time it came back around I’d stopped tracking anything.
Guide
So the checking out started after you couldn’t get your version in?
Seeker
Kind of. Yeah, right around then.
Guide
I still think part of it might be your attention protecting itself. Once the chance to contribute is gone, staying locked in on someone else’s thing with nothing to do costs a lot. So it drops you out. That’s not laziness, that’s economy.
Seeker
Hm. I don’t think it’s protecting anything though.
Guide
No?
Seeker
It’s not defensive like that. It’s more, like, when I couldn’t get my idea in, it stopped mattering to me whether I was there. The whole thing went flat. Like the conversation was only worth being in if I was in it.
Guide
Say that part again.
Seeker
If I’m not getting to put myself in, it doesn’t feel like it counts. That’s the thing I do. I’m not listening. I’m waiting for my slot.
Guide
Waiting for your slot.
Seeker
Yeah. God. I always thought I was bored. But I’m not bored. I’m hungry. I’m sitting there hungry for my turn and the second I know it’s not coming I leave.
Guide
That’s a different animal than a short attention span.
Seeker
Right, because my attention is fine. It’s fine the whole time I think I might get to speak. It only dies when I know I won’t. So it was never about being able to focus.
Guide
What’s it need, do you think, when someone’s talking. Your attention.
Seeker
You want me to say “to be present” or something. I’m not going to give you that. What it actually wants is to be seen having a good thought. That’s the fuel. When there’s no room for that, I’m running on nothing.
Guide
That’s more honest than where I was pointing.
Seeker
It’s not a great outlook. But yeah. Somewhere in me a conversation isn’t a conversation, it’s a chance to prove I’m worth listening to. And when I can’t, I don’t stay for theirs.
Guide
I don’t have anything to add to that.
Seeker
Yeah. I need to sit with it. I don’t like it but it’s the true thing I feel now.
If a conversation only holds you while you might get to speak, what do you need to enjoy when someone else is talking?
If you read back the conversation: notice where the guide quietly became the one who knows — naming things, settling them. That feels normal because it happens so often. It's also where your own sense of direction can go quiet. SelfChatter adds a second voice that just makes those moments visible, so the direction stays yours.