When I Should Be Doing Something Else

I do not have ducks.

I do not have a row.

   I have squirrels………

 And they’re at a rave.

@elephantjournal

Is this you, too? Ever feel this way, too? At least some of the time?

Or how about this one:

“I tried to be normal once. Weirdest two minutes of my life.”

Or

“In my defense, I was left unsupervised.”

Or

“Some people 

never go crazy.

What truly horrible

lives they must lead.”

Charles Bukowski

(Kidding, kind of...)

About people and books:

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”

Lemony Snicket

Or

“Reading a good book in silence

is like eating chocolate for the

rest of you life and never

getting fat.”

Becca Fitzpatrick

[Hear, Hear!]

So this is stuff I do when I am procrastinating (AKA what I am doing when I should be doing something else.).  And I read.

Sorry, not sorry.

What do you do when you should be doing something else?

A Procrastinator's Christmastime Challenge

I’m sitting at this keyboard and I’m freezing. I am freezing because my house is cold and I should have taken a warm shower a long while ago after sweating out five pounds in a Bikram (i.e. severely hot) yoga class. I did not do this yet and my fingertips are blue and I'm shivering.

I’m sitting here typing while also staring at a stack of gorgeous family photos on Christmas cards, which were received in the mail today. At the same time, my stack of Christmas cards remains sealed in plastic wrapped packaging, unaddressed. 

I’m still sitting here, obviously, with full knowledge of the unwrapped Christmas gifts, which cover the entire floor of my bedroom. Fancy gold ribbon and silver foil paper and cute gift tags lay next to those gifts. I haven’t touched any of them yet except to burrow a path from my side of the bed to the bathroom so I don’t take a tumble in the dark when I get up at night.

I have a long list of things I haven’t done yet.

And I also have an idea of why I keep putting off every thing that is HO HO HO related (including today’s shower which is technically due to pure laziness). I just don’t feel like doing anything. Period.

It's not how I feel about Christmastime. I’m not in a bah humbug mood either. I love the holidays.

It’s almost as if I feel paralyzed to do anything because I don’t feel any sense of pressure yet. And I have no idea why I don’t feel any pressure because, please tell me if I’m wrong, Christmas IS next week. I can’t help it. 

They key component is I have to feel it, the pressure. And I don’t. Not yet.

I don't know if I am a glutton for punishment, although I can rightfully say I work best with a thumb planted firmly on my back, with a deadline. I can cram like nobody’s business and always get my shit done. Thank God I’m not a perfectionist since procrastinators aren’t afforded that luxury anyway. 

There's something just so enticing to me, and more fun-filled, about doing anything other than what I'm supposed to be doing. So maybe then, it's not about being a procrastinator at all. Whatever you call it (what do you call it?), it makes me me and it's not likely to change much no matter anyone's consternation. 

So until I feel it, the pressure, I’ll find things I’d rather do like read, or workout, or eat, or hang out with friends, or read some more. 

The pickle is, once Friday morning comes, the last grain of sand will drop through the hourglass. Time will have expired. There’ll be plans and holiday parties and kids stuff and a warm weather vacation. Life will become its beautiful Christmas chaos. And I'll be left surfing its wave.

By then, no more time to get ready for Christmas.

I should shower and get some shit done, right? I suppose time's doing its ticking thing...

Mondays Are Made For...

I usually roll into Mondays without much issue. They’re just like any other day of the week except with more “any other day”s strung behind it. Mondays are good days for fresh starts.

Appearing as a vision of an organized home last night, I decided this particular Monday would be the beginning of closet cleaning. It’s true that things are bursting out of them, stuff is falling off shelves, and the doors don’t fully close. It’s overdue.

So the first thing I intended to do after brushing my teeth was to hit up the hardware store for gigantic, black trash bags. That would get me started.

But I got a call at 7:00am from a kid (one of mine). There's only one worse and that's the middle of the night call. Calling from the campus medical center, my son informed me of his fresh diagnosis of mononucleosis. And that he felt like doggie doo doo. And that he had a test in an hour.

When your kids are sick, it’s difficult to concentrate on spring-cleaning because you’re worried and feel powerless especially when they are away at school. (I should probably put together a care package.)

Instead of buying gigantic, black trash bags at the hardware store and digging right into those closets, I decided to go to yoga. I’d have the rest of the day to fill gigantic, black trash bags, right?

But if I wasn’t going to fill gigantic, black trash bags, I should do some “real” work.

Except that after yoga, I really felt like writing. Just a few words about cleaning out closets, I promised myself. The gigantic, black trash bags and my “real” work could wait because it’s only noon and I have the rest of the afternoon, right?

Now that I’m finished writing, I’d really like to finish the book I’m reading. It’s called Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. It is one of the funnier books I have read in a long time. There are only 50 pages left which won’t take long. That would still leave me the rest of the afternoon to fill gigantic, black trash bags and do some “real” work, right?

I have a habit of not getting much done on Mondays.

Lose Your Dreams And You Will Lose Your Mind: SOCS

As I say every Sunday, and I’m in love with Sundays by the way, I enjoy feeling free to write for five minutes and have somewhere to put it like Jana’s Thinking Place. Where stream of conscious writing is standard Sunday fare.

Write for five minutes, don’t edit, then stop which is hard for me!

This week’s (optional) prompt: Wouldn’t it be awesome if… ?

******************************

Wouldn’t it be awesome if I learned to manage my time better? I’ve had the entire weekend to my self. Yeaaaa meeee! But I don’t have much to show for except a list of movies I’ve watched On Demand and a couple hundred pages read in my book.

What I do when I have too much time on my hands is flitter away an entire day. Flittering never bores me. But then I must bust my tail the next day to pack in all the stuff I said I’d do or committed to do. That’s the place I’m in right now on Sunday morning at 11:33a.m.

Thank goodness for Saturday Mass!

I did accomplish the Swallow Cliff Stairs today and I’ve worked back up to my usual 16 sets I was doing pre-injury. Good thing because in 20 days I will have to do 3X that.

But that’s the only thing I’ve done.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could continue wasting time on YouTube and iTunes? And someone would shower for me, do my hair and makeup. Then hit the mall for my mom’s birthday present, remembering a card and paper too, wrap it all and drive me to her house 25 minutes away, all within the next 2 hours. 

Man…..I’m really feeling lazy.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to just lie on the couch, watch more movies and read a few hundred more pages? But then I'd disappoint my mom and I don't want that!

Times up. Gotta go do all the stuff I haven't done...

******************************

There's no time to lose, I heard her say


Catch your dreams before they slip away


Dying all the time


Lose your dreams


And you will lose your mind.


Ain’t life unkind?

Ruby Tuesday, The Rolling Stones

Do They Give Degrees In Procrastination?

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”

John Lennon

I couldn’t agree more with what John had to say in this regard! I love it. I enjoy doing it alone. I most certainly love having company when doing it. To me, wasting time feels decedent; like a really fine piece of rich dark chocolate.

I’m doing it at this very minute, obviously!

The term most people would use to describe this phenomenon is:

Procrastination* (definition courtesy of Wikipedia) In accordance with Freud, humans do not prefer negative emotions and handing off a stressful task until a further date is enjoyable. The concept that humans work best under pressure provides additional enjoyment and motivation to postponing a task.[1]

If they gave out degrees (and I don’t know who “they” would be), I would certainly test out as a highly qualified candidate for a Ph.D. I am that good at it; it could scare me if I let it.

I don’t have one lazy bone in my body but I can always find something more appealing and pleasurable to do than whatever I must. I am that easily lead astray. Plus when crunch time comes, I’m all over it. The heat under my rear end at such times produces the most incredible multitasking functions and production. Is pressure under fire addicting and is it weird if it's enjoyed?

For instance, today I have a million and one things to do before people descend here for the weekend; things I should have on a To-Do list; things that should have been done over the last few days (like assemble two big things purchased yesterday from Bed, Bath and Beyond that I thought were of the open and pop up variety. Bummer. No plans to do it). Wait...I wasn't supposed to be here anyway! Therefore:

It’s hump day. You know what that means? I still have two more days until I’m really in trouble (I’m kidding. I don’t get in trouble). And I won't be stressin' about it either!

Instead, I find myself reading, writing (Hey! Today I wrote two handwritten letters to friends who enjoy them that way. That counts in the “good things” column!), talking, texting, anything and everything, etc.

(Don't know what this say about me)

Being completely truthful, I’m procrastinating even as I write this post due to my very best talent for which I might even be better. I’m voracious when it comes to it! Daydreaming.

Daydreaming (definition courtesy of Wikipedia) is a short-term detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.[1]

Maybe procrastinating and daydreaming go hand-in-hand. I can't be the only one out there who's like this, can I? Like-mined people UNITE! I’m going for a bike ride.

*I picked the definition I liked best, so what?