My dog's nagging eyes

I wonder about pain and not getting on with things, how I scroll social media and never feel satisfied, how the rain falls softly on the conservatory roof and how my longing for dry, arid soil has everything to do with my procrastination to start a blog, which I know will be a thing I would do just for myself, and if anyone reads it, it might become a mind connection.

This is probably the longest sentence ever spilled onto one of my pages. I am astonished how my resistance to writing on a screen felt a massive setback. I have so many notebooks stacked on different bookshelves in my living room, office space, lodge, with so many words, ideas, thoughts scattered amongst these pages, that it feels overwhelming to get anything to lift off.

It seems procrastination has many different faces, from aforementioned books on the shelves, to backache bending over a screen scanning emails, to my dog’s nagging eyes for dinner. Most recent reason is that time slips away so fast and to create a sliver of free minutes to write, poses a mission impossible. But here I am proving myself wrong by pinning down words before yet another online meeting. My dog's tapping paws on the kitchen floor becomes the background music to this particular dance.

I set my teeth and my back is straight and my neck perched perfectly ready for what might happen on the page. I open up to channels of perception around me, background noise as my man softly shuffles in the kitchen putting the kettle on, a plane droning far off, the silence of the rain in a pause. The ache in my right leg after Max (the chiro)’s invasive pulling, melting, prodding to release the tibial band, sinking into the seat underneath me, the focus of my eyes on my fingers as I type – so different from the pen spilling words onto a page - faster, meaner, ready for action, awake – morning writing, pen on page is slow, lots of pausing, listening, smelling, feeling, appreciating my dog’s ears perking to possible action required.

Maybe procrastination has a purpose...

Allowing myself to feel the lapse of time and dream into each horrible sensation of not doing. The day hangs lopsided and the computer screen does not inspire me, and I would rather go feed the dog and drink a cup of tea. Outside the clouds are breaking ever so lightly and my mind rush at possible scenarios of what could be a good idea, a brilliant idea, a crap idea. How the critic creeps sideways into my head and lisps of tiredness, nay, absolute collapse internally. I hover liberally over the sentences as they break with even tones across the expanse of my mind. It becomes a dark hairy grisly treading heavily inside, across my heart and settles heavily in my stomach.

This is precisely the moment my dog jumps up, giving me a sideways glance as if a growl from my belly was uttered. The time marches on towards a looming online meeting of ‘I am not entirely sure what we said we would talk about and now I have to get my head straight with a sleeping grisly in my belly’. Tones of unrest shudder and roll in coils in my stomach – and his eyes are fixed on me, demanding some form of action. I rebel with a stretched out ‘wha...t!’ defending my struggle to get these words down onto this particular page, in this particular moment. How mind and fingers and internal doings clash and sputter. The rain started again and Barney finally stretched out next to my feet.