The Art of Procrastination

I know I’m not the only one who does this. We writers have a keen ability to avoid writing even though it’s something we love.

Today I practiced procrastinating in order to avoid working on one of my many WIPs, any of which I’d be happy to make some progress on. I started with household chores, which technically can’t be considered professional procrastination because they do need to get done anyway. Food shopping will not do itself and neither will the laundry. Once those tasks were done, I got sucked into cleaning up some of the basement. Again, a necessary evil. When I got tired, I came upstairs and balanced my checkbook. There’s a masterpiece of procrastination for you. Who would choose balancing the checkbook over writing? Only someone who doesn’t want to face a blank page.

After all my obligatory paperwork was finished, I decided it was too late in the day to get any serious work done before dinner so I went back to the basement and made a few bookmarks. Then it was dinner time. Then there was laundry to fold and, oh, yes, a blog entry to write. That’s where procrastination is elevated from just wasting time to performance art. First I read a couple of other blogs, then I gaze at my lovely sunset picture for a while and wait for inspiration to strike. Then I start writing – with a break to pet the dog for a few minutes. [That's him in the picture. He's working hard at inspiring me to ponder what dogs dream about.]

Now it’s 7:30 and I’ve run out of excuses. A hard day of procrastination is over and it’s time to get to work. Maybe after a nice cuppa…