Majorly distractable

Not sure what the deal is, but I am totally distracted by people these days. Not tons of mind chatter, but just continuously aware of people on the periphery of my vision. Practice this morning was fine, except for the weird sense of distraction.

It also occurs at (and I wonder if it doesn't originate from) work. We're getting toward the end of the year, there's all sorts of planning, changes in the works, strategies, questions, debates, blah blah blah. My team is getting bigger, so there are more designers to try to manage (LOL! and I do mean try)--they are all wonderfully talented and self-sufficient, but with strong tendencies toward perfectionism and compulsion, and of course as a manager, one of my jobs is to get product out the door--so I'm always trying to pry projects out of people's hands when it's finished and they are just polishing and polishing it and driving themselves mad in pursuit of perfection. In the meantime, they are all terrific people and my personal impulse is to just let them do whatever they want so they'll be happy.

So it's people, people, people. And in the meantime I am trying to find the most zenlike way to live. Trying to let go of the ego, opinions, judgments. To make as faint a set of footprints as possible. How, though, can one do that in a corporate world? Or in a shala, for that matter?

I had the strongest impulse to just practice alone at home, and after a week, when I went to the studio and Volleyball Guy said, "We missed you last week," I was really rather struck with a kind of guilt--like I was not contributing to the larger community. What is my resposibility?

There is, as always, an easy/difficult zen answer, at least for this very moment:

Just don't know. Finished practice, now go to work.