procrastination

I’m A Pro… Crastinator

/ Diane Henders / 31 Comments

I just realized I have a superpower!  Ordinarily this would be thrilling news; but sadly, my superpower seems to be procrastination:

I usually write my blog drafts on Mondays, but we were in Calgary last week and our 90-minute flight home on Sunday turned into a 24-hour ordeal due to fog.  By the time we finally got home late Monday afternoon I was too tired to write (although I somehow found the energy to work on our upstairs renovation).  I promised myself I’d write my draft first thing Tuesday morning.

But Tuesday morning I slept in until 7:30 AM, and then a tech showed up at 9:15 to work on our security system; so I couldn’t get started until after he left.

Then I got sidetracked by a few more issues with our upstairs renovation.

At last I settled down to write; but my knuckles were dry and cracked from the work I’d done the night before, so I had to go and rub on some hand lotion.

That’s when I realized that my fingernails had grown ridiculously long.  (Okay, for me ‘ridiculously long’ means ‘a couple of millimetres’; but that’s irrelevant.  They were TOO LONG, and desperately needed to be trimmed.)  That used up some more time.

And while I was standing there clipping my nails, I noticed that the soap dispenser had grotty blobs of soap clinging to it.  So I had to clean it.

Then when I cruised by the kitchen counter on my way to my laptop, I got waylaid by the spiced nuts and caramel popcorn and homemade Bits & Bites left over from Christmas.

Many handfuls minutes later I managed to tear myself away from the caloric free-for-all and plop into my chair… only to discover that it was noon; and therefore time for lunch.  Dang.

After lunch I had to put a roast in the slow cooker so it would be ready for supper.

Finally at one-thirty I made it to my chair and started typing, mainly because my anxiety over the deadline had finally exceeded my urge to delay.

But if it had been a task I truly wanted to avoid, I could have procrastinated much longer.  I have a whole arsenal of excuses excellent reasons:

  • Planning: One shouldn’t dive into action without adequate planning, right?  (If you’re about to remind me of my usual jump-in-with-both feet tendencies… just… shhhh.)
  • Re-planning: Things change (especially if I’ve procrastinated long enough) so I have to plan all over again.  (See also ‘re-re-planning’ and ‘re-re-re-planning’.)
  • Cleaning house: That’s not procrastinating; that’s protecting our health.
  • Reading: I’m topping up my well of creativity.
  • Baking: Homemade treats are much healthier than bought ones.  These cookies might save our lives!
  • Research: To the untrained observer it might look as though I’m scrolling LOLCats, but I’m actually doing in-depth research into current memes.  For my books.  Yeah, that’s it.
  • Social media: That’s ‘advertising and promotion’.

Now that I’ve discovered my superpower, I’m working on my superhero name.  WaitWoman?  DelayDame?  SuperStaller?  One thing’s for sure:  My superhero suit won’t include a fuchsia cape.

But maybe I’d better do some planning and research before I make a final decision.

And I just noticed some dust that needs to be cleaned up.

And I’m out of cookies.

Oh, look!  LOLCats…

What’s your superpower?

Better Never Than Late

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

Usually I’m a ‘do-it-now’ type, mostly because I have a shitty memory and if I don’t ‘do it now’, I’ll forget about it forever.  Or, if not forever, at least until somebody says, “Weren’t you supposed to have done that last week/month/year?”

But sometimes I know that a task needs to be done, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Usually I suck it up and do it anyway after a bit of procrastination, but sometimes… I just… don’t.  Even though I know I should.

For example:

My step-mom lives over 2,000 kilometres away, so I only get to visit her about twice a year.  When I was there a couple of years ago I made cioppino (a kind of seafood soup/stew) for supper.  The leftovers got stashed in the fridge, and the next day I went home.

Six months later, I was back.  My step-mom lives alone, but she has two fridges.  And what did I find, lurking at the very back of the very bottom shelf of the fridge that rarely gets used?

You guessed it.  That bowl of leftover cioppino.  Covered with clear plastic wrap that displayed all its grotty black edges and fuzzy white spots, while sealing in what was undoubtedly the stench to end all stenches.

But I didn’t deal with it right away.  I was only there for a few days, and we were busy.  I forgot all about the Black-Death-In-A-Bowl.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Six months later…

It was still there.

I’m not normally squeamish.  In our household I’m the one who guts the fish, butchers the meat, bandages the wounds, and cleans up the vomit.  But I avoided The Bowl That Shall Not Be Named.  I didn’t even mention it to my step-mom, because that would have meant admitting I had known it was there all along… and then one of us would have to deal with it.

A few days later I cravenly fled home.  Cringing with shame, but not ashamed enough to actually deal with that vessel of festering putrefaction.

Six months later…

It was gone.  I heaved a huge but secret sigh of relief and said nothing.

Later I was yakking on the phone to my niece, who had been out to visit my step-mom just before I’d made my latest visit.  “Yeah, we cleaned out the fridge,” she said blithely.  “There was a bowl in there that was just…”

I burst out laughing.  “That was you?  You finally dealt with the bowl?”  I confessed the whole sordid story and added, “I just couldn’t bear to open that up and wash out the bowl.  You’re a better woman than I.”

She started laughing, too.  “No, I’m not.  I buried it.”

“Buried it?  Bowl and all?”

“Yep.  I just carried the whole thing out behind the shed and dug a hole and put it in.  I nearly puked when I covered it over and it squished up through the dirt…”

By then we were crying with laughter.  Dang, I wish I’d thought of that solution a year ago!

So, tomorrow I leave for my step-mom’s again.  By the time I arrive she’ll have read this and I’ll have to offer my abject apologies; but I can’t promise I’ll never do it again.

And I think cioppino is permanently off the menu.

What your finest example of procrastination?

Sometimes Words Fail Me…

/ Diane Henders / 21 Comments

…and then I draw stick people.

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This post is a prime example of the Little Guy With Pitchfork in action.  The exchange went something like this:

Me:  Time to write a blog post!

LGWP:  You should draw a comic strip instead.

Me:  I’m a writer, not a cartoonist.

LGWP:  You can draw stick people.  C’mon, it’ll be fun!

Me:  Well… yeah… I can draw stick people… kinda…  *yells*  Little Guy With Wings!  Where are you?  I need you!

*distant sound of the theme song from Jeopardy*

LGWP:  Ha!  Don’t be such a wuss.  I bet you’re too chicken to even try.  (Note:  The LGWP is a tricky little bastard, and he knows how to push my buttons – see Doin’ It On A Dare.)

Me:  Why you little…  I’ll show you!  *grabs felt pen*

The trouble is, the LGWP is not only tricky, he’s frequently right.  I do want cookies and popcorn.  The house and the laundry do need attention.  And there are only so many omelets you can eat because they’re easy to make at the last minute.  (Though I did have a particularly yummy one last night, with bacon, zucchini, onions, peppers, salsa, and feta cheese…)

Anyway, it was fun drawing this strip, but it also took me about ten times as long as writing a regular blog post.

So where was my LGWW all this time?  Drinking beer and watching Jeopardy, apparently.  I never saw so much as a feather.

It’s so hard to get good help these days.

Does anybody else have an LGWP?  Or a better LGWW than mine?