How Do You Do, Procrastination?

My procrastination knows no bounds this week.Normally I can rattle out a rant with relative ease but lately my creative blogging efforts have been limited to nudging my laptop with a stick. 

I never thought I’d long for the day when machines become self-aware. The other day I found myself thinking, “What if I came home from work and found a mysterious message on the laptop screen? Something like, ‘welcome home’, or ‘I’ve been waiting for you’, or ‘your spice cupboard is a disgrace’? At least then the computer could do my writing for me. (sigh) I shouldn’t have bought a white laptop. Black ones are more evil.”

I spent 40 minutes thinking about that. 40 minutes.

To be fair, I have little to no free time at the moment, so it's both procrastination and being close to death. I have been rehearsing for Hobson’s Choice with The Canterbury Players three times a week (Tues, Weds & Fri) for...ever, I think. We go up in just over a week, and I still can’t stop laughing at the line “you’ll be respectful to my Willie!” If you come to see the show, please laugh at it as well to cover the sound of me saying “It sounds like PENIS!” on stage.

I’ve also been attempting to learn Cuban Salsa one night a week. It’s going well, apart there being only one male in the beginners' group who has very clammy hands and arms like terrified spaghetti when it comes to his ‘frame’. Still, he’s better than the old fella in the intermediates’ group who thinks he’s qualified to give instructions. He spent a good 30 seconds last week saying to me “you have to move your left arm! LEFT arm, you have listen to me sweetheart, it’s your LEFT arm!”, all while pointing at my right arm. I also inadvertently insulted a female pupil by mistaking her for an instructor (girls are allowed to partner with the female instructors). I went up to her to practice steps. She glared and snapped, “Are you going to be the man?” “No,” I replied, “aren’t you supposed to be a man?” She did not look pleased.

All this leaves me with one week night free, Monday. And I can’t write on a Monday night, no one can. The weekends are no good either; when you are effectively working most of Friday evening, Saturday is spent catching up on the vitals like housework, shopping, wall staring and enemy listing. Saturday night is generally date night (or, as I like to call it, drink until you don’t feel feelings night) and then Sunday….well, Sunday has become my worst enemy. 

Write drunk, edit sober – Ernest Hemingway

I plan, oh how I PLAN, to spend the day writing and organizing. But it never works out. With just one small window of opportunity, I hit two walls: not only can I not write on demand, but it also takes very little to distract me. Four hours can whiz by in which I watched half an episode of Big Bang Theory, browsed Facebook 112 times and looked up ideal places to build a cliff-top house (I don’t like the sea and living on a cliff seems like a good way to show the ocean who’s boss). I could take myself off into a room without TV or internet, but I’d only end up making a small fort with the furniture.

The beau is equally susceptible to distraction when lesson planning for the coming week, and will abandon his work for any of the following reasons:         

• Making a sandwich
• Asking me what I’m doing
• Needing biscuits
• Noticing we have a TV and staring at it
• Remembering a very important folk song I have to listen to
• Offering to go to the shops and buy ingredients for lunch, even if we have all of them already
• Giving me a creepy neck rub and pretending to be a goblin
• More biscuits 
• Have we definitely watched all of Parks and Recs?

We have been known to have the following exchange of a Sunday:

Me: “Chuh! How’s all that lesson planning coming along, dear? They won’t write themselves!”

Beau: “How are those three blog posts you promised to write today?”

Me: “I don’t know, how’s your joyless FACE?”

Beau: “I don’t know, how’s your dried-up husk of a womb?!”

Me: “I don’t know, how’s the shrivelled up ace of spades that you call a heart?!”

Beau: “It’s FINE!!!”

Me: “I’M FINE TOO!!!!”

Beau: “……….........sex?”

Me: “Yeah, go on then.”

You can see what I’m dealing with here.

So, how about you lot? 

We’ve all been there – a deadline to be met, an essay to complete, a song to compose, a novel to finish (shut UP). What are your tried and tested ways of beating procrastination? Or, what are the strangest things you have done to avoid a pressing task?

Share, my pretties, share!
(As in comment below)