My name is Clare and I am easily distracted...

Hi! My name is Clare and I write at Pampelmuse and Me. I get easily distracted. Limiting the list of things that I get distracted by to one or two, or even a handful, is difficult. I love my camera and get distracted by light and shadows. I find myself stopping and gazing at the way a branch reaches over a fence, or the arrangement of fruit in a bowl. My eyes see beautiful photographs waiting to be taken everywhere and this distracts me. I also like 2nd hand bookshops, making things, receiving letters in the mail and shopping...

Perhaps the better question is what do I get distracted from? This, unfortunately, is easy. Sport, running, keeping fit and maintaining my body in an equilibrium where both it and I are happy. This takes second fiddle to my camera and my crafty pursuits. But this autumn I've decided to do something about it. You see, I want boots. Brown boots with a bit of attitude, perhaps something like this.

But I can't really justify just "buying" them just like that, so I've decided that I must earn them. Yep, I'm treating myself like a kid and have designed my own good behaviour 'score card' - only I'm calling it my "Not to be Distracted" card. Everytime I go to the gym, 10 euro goes toward my beautiful boots. Everytime I run, it's 20 euro.

Over the weekend I ran twice and went to the gym once. I'm embarrassed to admit that this works so well on me. But there you go, the 'carrot' is always better than the 'stick' in my book and in a couple of weeks I'm going to be sporting (sic) some lovely new boots.

Clare