The Procrastinator

Procrastinator, that's what they call me. Can't say I disagree. Most of the time, anyway. It's a label I've come to wear like armour. Whatever the fuck that means. It turns out it runs in my family. I wonder if anyone else has the same kind of genetic heritage. Genetic or copied procrastination.

Rather do anything else than clear my to-do list in good time. Rather create fun haiku and play around with silly acrostics than write that important piece of fiction.

Other things seem so much more appealing, than my dabblings with the Fibonacci sequence or my recycled words project

Creativity isn't the issue. I have it in bucketloads it seems. But often what I choose to work on, is not the thing I should be working on.

Really think, and hope, I'm not the only one.

At least I am still regularly creating, making my old brain work.

Still should work on my massive file of WIPs. Those works in progress won't finish themselves.

The excuse that I often use is just that, at least I am creating, and the more I create, the more I write, and the more it spurs me to tackle the WIPs.

It often feels better to produce something more organically. So when I get ideas that take shape and have a life and purpose of their own - to just roll with it rather than work on eating the ugliest frogs in my backlog of WIPs.

Need to get more focused though, because I want to bring the ideas that fester to life as much as those ones that just leap out my brain - the ones that want to be first in line for the Create Story button.

At least I am still regularly creating, making my old brain work. Using the words and ideas as they come to me.

They give me little to no choice, as I've often said. The words need to be said, need to be uttered, and shared. It's like...stories need to be told. That guy who is waiting at the edge of the dark and creepy forest is held in a pause between life and death...waiting for me to seal his fate - whether it's good or bad. The man who is on the brink of committing suicide is still going to be there, stuck between life and death, unless I complete the damn story. However, a funny or pointed acrostic or haiku pushes itself to the front to be put out there first.

It's a constant battle and struggle. I need to channel that same attitude though, into my WIP folder. The one I talk about so much. The one that is sitting on my computer, digital and inorganic, and yet I see it staring at me. I feel it taunting me. Like it has a life, a beating heart. I need to treat it the same as I do those spur-of-the-moment ones.

Oh, the days when I have been working on client web content. Writing interesting content for a random office cleaning business or some web hosting business.

Never do I get a break from the WIPs calling to me...wanting me to do something with them...to complete them. It's like students who are looking to be taught and moulded into fully-fledged children of the future. But, as The Procrastinator, if there is a new word or an interesting phrase that comes to my mind, that wins out every single time. And in some ways, even if I do have to do better - I am fine with it!

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Thank you for reading this piece, the latest edition in the unofficial, accidental series "What Paul Did Instead of Finishing Works In Progress!"

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How do you find dealing with procrastination?

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