My Writer’s Block

It’s been a while since my last post and I bow my head in shame that I have been slacking on the blog front. I am a procrastinator of the worst kind -I set goals, things I would like to achieve, productive uses of my time, stuff I can be proud of, and then, because it becomes part of the ‘to do’ list, I instantly would rather find something, anything else to do. It’s terrible. Writing my blog, my book, weekly shops, washing, washing up, cleaning the flat, tidying up, these are all things I want to do. No, wait, the first two are the only things I actually want to do, unfortunately by the time I’ve done all the other stuff that has to be done to avoid living in squalor (and even then I’m not that great at doing them regularly enough), I look at my list and think, ‘I’d rather watch a film now’.

Add to this that I spend my working week writing for other people in the world of marketing, finding the motivation to sit down and write something of my own that is creative, funny, interesting, and actually worth reading becomes impossible.  And even now as I write this, I realise this post fulfils none of the above criteria, but sod it, I’ve never been one for criteria, fell short the second I was born – “all four functioning limbs? Ah, not quite.”

I know that most people find that after the daily grind stuff is complete, there is a level of procrastination that follows. Once you reach the activities you want to do, you often find you just can’t be bothered, or ran out of time, or it’s raining and you’d rather watch GOT or Friends in your pjs drinking cups of tea and eating cake – unless of course you’re a self-motivated saint in super drive.

My better half is one of these self-motivated saints that successfully does all the washing up (quicker than me) and sits down to write at least 500 words each day of the weekend. Instead of his almost fastidious dedication to his writing inspiring me to do the same, I sit in my pjs, jealous, and even more reluctant to do it – just with a steaming side plate of my own self-imposed guilt and sense of failure as a human being.

He’s just a better person than me, he wants to write and he does, even if he comes out grumbling, he’ll sit in his room and write. I’m proud of him for it. But I also have a weird satisfaction that in this case he’s the exception and I’m the rule. Or so I’m assuming, you could all be sat there thinking: “No dear, he’s the rule and you’re just the lazy, unproductive exception trying to justify said lazy behaviour by bringing us all down with you”. To that I say “touché my fictional readers, you are quite correct and astute” (although I’m not convinced that’s the case – to both your astuteness and me being the exception).

However, saying that, I actually took it a step further. I’ve become so adverse to writing as a weekend activity that I managed to fill my time over the last few months with other crafts just to put off writing.

So now that I’ve bored you all with a rather long-winded explanation (and fantasy conversation) detailing my lack of blogging and human failure, today’s post is going to show you what spectacular projects I’ve worked on instead of all the things I should be doing (mainly writing, some cleaning too). Be prepared to be exceptionally underwhelmed….

The Art of Procrastination

I’d like to point out faffing as one of my procrastinations, but there’s no picture for that. Also, nursing hangovers has been a bit of a contributor to weekend laziness, although often I’m not even really hanging but just tired from the late night (yes, I’m getting old) – it’s still enough of an excuse to watch films and drink tea. But enough of that, behold actual activities.

Painting:

I warn you I am a very bad artist, extraordinarily bad. My paintings always look wrong, some basic perspective knowledge is distinctly lacking, or you just can’t tell what it is- so really I have two styles: Shit. And Shitter.

The painting was copied from this photograph from my A-level:

My version:

As you can see my version is, well, crap and definitely falls under the ‘shitter’ category of my artwork. Plus side, I had a lot of fun painting it. I was fully relaxed and immersed for an entire Sunday afternoon – I not only managed to shut the world out, I blocked out my internal neurotic stressing and anxiety of life crap. This is quite a task.

So although painting is one point in the ‘bad procrastination’ column, in the ‘making life more enjoyable, semi-bearable, and less anxiety ridden’ column, I’d say a solid two points. This doesn’t change the fact it looks like an eight year old painted it (don’t be polite and claim it doesn’t, it absolutely does, maybe a little insulting eight year olds, lets make it a five year old), or remedy my lack of writing, but at least it benefitted my personal sanity.

….

I may have discovered why I don’t write very often, it seems I have a lot to say. Having moved onto activity two, I discovered another 1,500 words on the subject. So my procrastination journey is going to be a three-parter to accommodate my ramblings. I hope you enjoy! The next instalment will come soon.