Sunday…A Procrastinator’s Paradise!

If Monday is a day of miraculous change, then Sunday must be the last hurrah…a day of pure, evil self-indulgence and utter procrastination. After all, even if our bad habits have swallowed us up like quick sand, somehow come Monday morning we are supposed to be a new creation, cleansed from all our previous sins…a clean slate. Out with the old and in with the new, even our very DNA changes as fat comes thin, lazy becomes industrious and that book project is miraculously finished.

At least, it will be!

Of course, it all starts off with a bang Monday morning and we’re off and running.

So, with Sunday being our last day of freedom, does that give us some kind of all-day indulgence pass allowing us to have that final, last big fling? To blob out, eat as much chocolate as we can possibly stuff in our gob, carpe vice or simply bask in some procrastinator’s paradise?

This is my idea of a perfect Sunday!

Humph, I’d like to think so but I’m not so sure. Something tells me that if I want tomorrow to go off without a hitch, at least some of the hard work, needs to begin today…especially cleaning up my desk.

However, being Sunday, I’ll turn procrastination into an art form.

That means writing about tomorrow. In other words, Monday.

Mondays are weird. While Sundays are ripe with opportunity and our best intentions including the planning and detailed required to pull our best intentions off (i.e time tables, schedules, lists etc etc etc!!!) Monday becomes something of a “catastrophe”!

Instead of being fueled by Sunday’s zealous enthusiasm, when my alarm goes off Monday morning, I have something akin to a killer hangover. Completely immobile, I keep pressing the snooze button, praying that the kids have dressed and fed themselves and won’t put up a fight. Who am I kidding? Hearing the usual screams, I stagger out into the kitchen feeling like the Grim Reaper possessed me during the night and all that’s left is a ghostly shell.

Every cell in my body aches and I don’t know whether hangover cures work for Mondayitis but anything is worth a shot. Having just enough strength to power up the blender, I throw in the mandatory raw eggs, steak and spinach and even a few nails for added strength and while that’s whirling around I down a glass of Berocca. I’m hoping all that “B-B bounce” will somehow catapult us out the door.

No such luck! The kids aren’t moving. The boot up the backside, cattle prod and even putting Minecraft into time out for eternity aren’t working. Desperate times mean desperate meaures, so I threaten to drop them at the Juvenile Justice Centre just up the hill. Juvenile Justice is not very far from the local pound either. So, if the dog keeps barking at 5.30AM (thank you very much, Lady!), I can drop her off on the way.

Peace and quiet but, of course, I jest!

My goodness! I’m sure all of this strife wasn’t part of the new script?

After all, isn’t this a repeat from last week’s episode?

This Monday was supposed to be different!

“Cut! Didn’t you read the script?”

We definitely need to cut and find a new script every single Monday morning.

Apparently not!

You see, the trouble is that even though this particular Monday morning might be new, the cast of characters and the set are still the same. This being the case, why would I, or indeed any of us, expect this Monday to be any different from any other Monday and have things miraculously work like clockwork?

“It’s just Another Manic Monday”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAZgLcK5LzI

A detour on the way to school on my birthday a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, real life isn’t a motivational book turned real just in the same way that fairy tales are exactly that…fairy tales. We know fairies are pure fantasy, imagination and wishful thinking. We’d never expect them to come to life. Yet, for some reason we expect the kids to empty the dishwasher unprompted, the chocoholic to become sugar-free, the Minecraft addict to read a book and the house to clean itself just because it’s Monday morning.

Hello!!

Welcome to the real world!

The instant fix just isn’t going to happen.

There is no magic wand. Just persistence, being consistent, putting in the hard yards while having the faith that you can get there.

It apparently takes 6 weeks to break or forge a habit.

That might not be very long if you’re the sort of person who thrives on routine and methodical order but being creative, impulsive and haphazard, six weeks is an eternity.

This means that for any of this to change, I’ll need to be extremely determined.

Not only that.

I’ll need to draw up something of a road map of how I’m going to get there and stick to it. No detours!

So, starting from tomorrow, I will be setting myself a daily schedule. Living by the clock, the “panster” is going to have to become a “planner” or I am never going to get my books written. Finished. Something I know could really work will never happen and while the blog is going well, I’ll just end up being a “wanna be”.

Writing in my journal at Perisher in 2012 while the rest of the family was skiing.

I have never been a wanna be. I’ve mostly gone and done it but I’ve taken too many blows over the last couple of years. I needed a breather. I need to rethink the direction of the book after life events radically changed the plot and sabotaged the entire philosophical thread.

But…

That was a year ago. I’ve had time to rethink. Re-evaluate and create a different, probably more authentic and realistic way of looking at how we handle life’s setbacks. That it isn’t always just onward and upward. That indeed, just when we taste success, the whole mountain can come crumbling down and we’re seemingly back at the start again, buried in a snow and rubble but we still need to pick ourselves up and start over and that is my specialty.

Now, it’s time to become my own coach and motivator. Encourage myself to keep going in the same way that I encourage others and tell them that they “can do it”. That I am good enough.

Also, that I can somehow juggle all the stuff with the family, house etc and get this book done. That there will always be pressing priorities but they can be juggled and pushed aside to pursue what I know is my personal quest. I need to get that book out the door and I need to do it now

.

I need to do that or I know that I am but a bonsai of who I was always meant to be. That this isn’t about dreams or visions but who I am almost as a physical being. Not only writing but being read and getting my journey into a published format is as much a part of each and every cell in my body as my DNA and yet, I freeze.

Paralysis through analysis?

If I just start writing, or indeed, gather up all the writing I’ve already done and compile it, will it all suddenly come together and somehow knit together like a scarf? Become something of a tapestry?

I have to believe that it will.

That I can do this.

I know this isn’t going to be easy but I’m NOT going to analyze things anymore. That would only cause further procrastination.

I need to become who and what I was always intended to be.

Not only a writer but also an author.

A person with that cherished book in their hand with their name on the front page on the cover and and the spine.

No longer a “gunna do” but a “Done it”.

For this reason, tomorrow can’t wait.

Tomorrow begins today…even if it is a Sunday!

How do you manage procrastination and crippling self-doubt on the writing front? What has got you through?

xx Rowena

PS: I let Bilbo have the last word…”I am NOT procrastinating!”



Bilbo with his ball. Actually, that’s another dog’s ball. Humph! Just call him obsessed!