One thing I’ve discovered (or been reminded of, or something) lately is that I can be capable of some fairly ingenious methods of procrastination when I’m supposed to be writing.
I’ve said, more than once, that I can be a pretty lazy individual. But, I can be surprisingly productive when it comes finding ways to delay staring at a blank page or screen.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the things I do to avoid writing are things that need to be done anyway. It might be cleaning, doing the dishes, preparing my lunch for the next day at work; all of that has to happen at some point. But equally, I can find myself doing stuff that is completely superfluous. How many times do the bookshelves or the Blu-Ray collection need to be re-organised? How many random internet articles do I need to
What’s most annoying is that I can realise what I’m doing even as I’m doing it. And frequently, thanks to some weird OCD-esque thing in my head, if the timing’s not right, I’ll find myself saying something like “Well, I’ll just wait until it’s X o’clock before I get started.” That way I can find something else to fill in the time rather than just getting on with it.
I don’t like to think about how much gets wasted because of that, or what might have been without it. Procrastination isn’t just the thief of time, but of words as well.
The Scribblings 