Procrastination Again

Things to do

I have things to do today. School work, promoting my upcoming work, finding some ARC readers, doing my newsletter, etc, etc.

I don’t feel like doing a bit of it.

Motivation

I’m just going to do one task at a time, a few minutes at a time. After the work I do for my career, I’ll start with the hardest thing to motivate for, which is the newsletter because it has a lot of fiddly tasks. Then, fueled by more coffee, the tasks I fear because I have to put myself forward, like finding ARC readers next. And then writing.

Photo by Igor Haritanovich on Pexels.com

But first, coffee.

This looks like a job for coffee

I haven’t had my cup of coffee yet. Maybe I’ll have two just to be sure. If I have three half-caffs, I’ll have a cup and a half worth of real coffee. At any rate, coffee.

The inertia of a warm bed

Right now in northwest Missouri, it’s -8 degrees Fahrenheit (for the rest of the world, -22.2222 degrees Celsius). In other words, it’s very cold. My blankets are warm. There’s a cat curled up with me. I don’t want to leave this warm bed to go to work even though I will spend no more than a minute or so from doorstep to workplace in the cold.

In other words, I suffer from inertia — a word which came from physics, meaning the inability of an object to change velocity or direction without a force acting upon it. In the human sense, it means the tendency to do nothing or stay unchanged (Wikipedia, 2019). I have to admit it’s going to take a force acting upon me to move me out the door today.

What are the forces that move humans? To continue the physics metaphors, we can group these forces into pushes and pulls. In our case, pushes are the repelling factors that relate to necessity and adverse consequences if we don’t leave the bed; pulls are the attracting consequences of getting out of bed.

So as I lie here in bed, I think about the pushes — if I don’t get out of bed, I don’t meet my classes, my division chair gets mad, my students miss out on class material. I think about the pulls — if I get out of bed, there’s breakfast and coffee and people and time to write. We feel more satisfied by responding to pulls than to pushes — it’s more gratifying to make something of the day than to avoid disaster.

So I climb out of bed, disappointing my cat, and start my day, responding to the pulls more than to the pushes. It’s going to be a good day.

Thoughts and Prayers

I know that most of you in the United States are people I already know. My overseas readers, for the most part, seem to be regulars, but I don’t know you (or don’t think I know you). I am addressing all of you.

I need your thoughts and prayers.

Not in the sense of “I need to say something of comfort so I can go back to what I was doing,” as is too often the case when handling preventable tragedies in the US.

But I believe in thoughts and prayers if they occur in the sense of “I hope the best for this person.” I believe this has an effect — not necessarily to bring out a desired outcome, but to provide hope, clarity, courage, patience in the person who needs these things.

I need these things, because I’m struggling with writing. You might have noticed that I haven’t been able to write daily, and that’s because I don’t know if I’m going to continue writing. I have no idea if I’m ever going to be published, and I’m not sure it’s worth the time and money it takes to improve and make a story reading-ready.

But I don’t know if I’m not going to continue writing, either.

So, if you have a spare moment and the intent to help, send thoughts and prayers my way. You don’t even have to tell me you did. But I need to find clarity to move forward in whatever direction opens to me. .

Post-semester crash, or "My brain shut down".

(Note: I love the Victorian way of titling books with the “or” in the middle, such as Syphilis, or the French Disease). So I decided to try it.

My brain, in a word, is empty right now. It’s a form of inertia. It’s what happens if I spend two weeks laser-focused on getting final projects and exams graded — and I fun out of grades. Like I’m plowing a field, but then I run out of field and crash face-first into a wall.

I’m trying to write on a story, any of my stories, editing, scheduling, ANYTHING.

But my brain seems incapable of creating right now.

I hope it comes back soon.

The Inertia Paradox

I am into Finals Week in my day job here at Northwest Missouri State University. My schedule has already relaxed as I make it a point to get all my grading done before finals week, and my exams are multiple choice. For all intents and purposes, then, I’m done with the semester except for paperwork.

My summer will be much more flexible — I will supervise 20 interns, which will require visiting them, calling their supervisors at the beginning of the semester, and some grading, all of which can be scheduled at my discretion within reason.

I will have more time this summer. And it will make it harder to write. Does this seem like a paradox? Wouldn’t having more time make it easier to write?

As it turns out, having more time — or more specifically, less to do — makes it harder to write. We are all victims of inertia — a body at rest stays at rest. But inertia works both ways — a body in motion stays in motion.

During the school year, I am a body in motion — four classes, half a dozen interns, meetings, other committments. On a summer schedule, I have plenty of time to be at rest, with no timetable set for me. I can spend all day checking for readers on Blogger if I want. Therefore, I’m a body at rest, and without solid goals — more solid than I have in the school year — I will become a body at rest.

After this school year, which was one of the hardest I’ve had in a while, it would be welcome to rest. But not long enough that I become a body at rest.

Inertia

I haven’t written on my work in progress the past several days because of two things: The need to have my classes laid out and revised by the first day of college meetings (i.e. Wednesday), and the delightful distraction known as planning my summer garden.

I’m done with class prep, so it’s time to write again. However, I’m suffering from inertia of motion — it’s easier to continue what I have been doing (revising classes, planning the garden) than it is to change direction again and start to write. In other words, my mind is stuck.

How can I break inertia and start writing again? Marelisa (2004) suggests some inertia-busters:

Shock Myself into Action — Think of a goal I won’t meet if I don’t write.

Secure Short Term Wins to Overcome Inertia — Frame my goal as “spending four half-hour periods writing today”.

Dangle a Carrot In Front of Myself – Reward myself if I complete the task.

Fill My Gas Tank — Rest if I need to!

Use a Stick — Make myself do something unpleasant (like cleaning the litterbox) if I don’t complete the task.

Create a Clear Vision of What You’re Trying to Achieve — Some people have visionboards. This doesn’t work for me because I have trouble visualizing (imagine a very blurry image that lasts for about a second). But I can think of this as the relationship between my main character and others.

Stage It — Have all my writing things at hand, staring me in the face. In this case, it’s sitting in my most comfortable chair with my computer and computer desk.

So now I have goals based on these strategies to overcome inertia and push myself in another direction. Have you noticed my writing has been more technical and less poetic the past couple days? That’s inertia. I need a creative outlet to get my balance back. I need to write.

Marelisa (2004). Seven Ways to Overcome Inertia and Get Yourself Unstuck. Available: https://daringtolivefully.com/overcome-inertia [Deember 31, 2017].