At last...my first entry!

I'm the biggest procrastinator in the world.

I set up this blog the other night as a way of procrastinating from working on the marketing plan for my new book. It was pretty fun setting it up. But I didn't know what to write, so I decided to wait until the next day. I didn't write anything the next day. Or the next. Or the next. I spent nearly two weeks procrastinating by doing almost anything else instead of writing the first entry for this blog. Amazing how what seems like fun when it's being done to avoid doing something else turns into work when it becomes something that has to be done. Do you follow? Read it again. You'll get it.

It's just that my attention span is so freaking limited. I can't follow through on one thought or action without getting distracted and wanting to check my e-mail. (I don't even get that much e-mail. But it always feels like such validation when I do. Like clear evidence that someone was thinking about me without my reminding them of my existence.) I had planned to do laundry this morning, but I don't really want to do laundry and so I'm writing this entry as a way of avoiding doing laundry. Because any time that I feel the impulse to write, it trumps anything else. It's so rare that I actually get that impulse. Funny then that I've chosen a career as a writer. I should have chosen a career as a potter or an accountant or a laundress, because then I'd be writing all the time just to avoid potting or accounting or laundering.

I was in a bookstore once and found a book on procrastinating. I didn't buy it. I just carried it around every time I visited that bookstore. It was pathological. I'd carry it around and then put it down again figuring that I'd just buy it the next time. And, the sad thing is, that happened a few times before I realized how pathetic I was being. So one day I finally just shamed myself into buying it. And I brought it home and put it on my desk. And NEVER READ IT. Big surprise. It's called PROCRASTINATION by Jane B. Burka, Ph.D. and Lenora M. Yuen, Ph.D. (clearly, Jane and Lenora put a lot of thought into that title). Seriously, I don't think I ever opened it. No. I'm wrong. I just looked at it and there is actually an indication that I paged through it at one time. The page is dog-eared on the chapter "Fear of Succeeding: Hello Procrastination, Good-Bye Success." And that's where I guess I stopped reading. Maybe I'll pick it up again. Maybe I won't.

Good-Bye Success. Hello Laundry!