There is a room in my home perfect for procrastination

This is the sixth night the family has been gone.

By the time you’re reading this, they’ll have returned home.

Today was a day of inspired procrastination.

The wood in the wood room was becoming unbalanced. 

I want to make the kindling last. I have a lot of bone dry wood. I want to stretch it out into the new year so I have some really dry kindling for the dead of winter.

Instead of merely sorting things into new piles and bringing in new wood to dry, I embarked upon a wood room deep clean.

I began with a solid sweeping with a very short corn broom.

I kept finding dirt. I just kept sweeping the floor with a thirty inch long child’s corn broom.

I worked away, hunched over, like Yoda. I swept every crevice and crack. My Jedi mind trick was the power to avoid all the things I had intended to do. I found dirt so hidden even it didn’t know of its existence.

I started getting active again after doing some deep cleaning. I had to. Most of the week I’d wasted. I was either lazy or resting. I never can tell with me which is the case. Either way, I was coming up short of the expectations I had for myself.

Partial list of things I had intended to do over the last week:

• Laundry

• Clean room

• Dishes

• More groceries

• Taxes

• Ride bike

• Surf

• Finish second draft of book

Instead? I spent a lot of time just sitting around. I merely moved dirt.

I created pile after pile. I finished nothing.

For a while, I danced with the idea of leaving them there to be kicked around and ultimately a bigger mess to contend with later.

It was the perfect trap for procrastination. I’d sweep a mess into a pile but not finish the job. In doing so, I’d create more messes to clean up. I could then avoid my real work by cleaning up messes that I had left there. These half finished jobs always came back to haunt me.

Today? I put the stuff in a garbage bin. It’s off the floor.

I swept this floor five times.

I scraped epoxy off a rubber mat instead of doing anything productive.

I spent time attempting to fold a fitted sheet. Ultimately I failed. 

Side note: There are two things I never want to know how to do:

One: I never want to know how to back up a  trailer. This is a skill many in my family have. I never ever want to learn how to do this. I’m bristling as I write this. This act of defiance seems a bit ridiculous. And I am ridiculous. I never want the responsibility of backing up a trailer.

Two: I never want to know how to fold a fitted sheet. I like my fitted sheets the way I like my sweaters: balled up and sloppy. Attempting to fold a fitted sheet didn’t just feel awkward. It felt wrong. I felt wrong. I balled it up and moved on.

Even in this post, I’ve avoided talking about my avoidance by commenting on things I further want to avoid. 

So what happened? 

Eventually, I worked on the book.

I’m happy to say that Draft number two of The Book of Wrong Answers Volume 1 is complete. 

That’s the news part.

And this is how you do an announcement the wrong way.

Tell a long, convoluted story, get people lost, then tell them the announcement part at the end.

Well done for making it to the juicy bit of mews.