Sunday, March 24, 2013

Can't I Just Start in the Middle?

I have the absolute worst time starting things.

Conversations, massive organizing projects, cooking dinner, blog posts, are all harder for me to begin than a limbless shrew attempting to start a lawn mower.

I'm not a procrastinator, well most of the time. It's often that I just get completely overwhelmed by the thought of the entire process.

My intentions start out well. I get up and with great purpose stride towards the mop determined to clean my floors.  I will have victory and clean floors!

As I walk towards my intended target I start thinking about all that task will entail.  Ok, I have to move some furniture, then sweep and make sure everything is up off the floor... 

About halfway there my brain shorts out and I suddenly realize that my shoes by the front door are not lined up and for some reason that suddenly offends me more than being smacked across the face with a herring. Then I realize that I should probably go through the fruit on my counter and make sure none of it has gone bad. Then, of course, you can't forget to double check to see if you paid the electric bill yesterday or not. Then some of my books are upside down...

At this point it's been an hour and honestly I would have been finished long ago with my chosen task if I had just focused and gotten it done.  Now I begrudgingly wander towards my kitchen and start the mopping process very much in a "Hard Knock Life" type mood.

Each and every time I have the same exact feeling of, "Ugh! Why was that so hard to start!?"

When it comes to writing I am ten times worse.  It took me 45 minutes just to write the first two sentences of this post. However, in that 45 minutes I also checked my bank account balance, picked the perfect writing music, saw what was going on on Facebook (nothing, as always), chose different perfect writing music, looked up how long the movie "The Shining" is and whole bunches of super useful stuff. 

Sadly, it isn't until around this point that I can just start writing and continue to do so without having to pause every few minutes to Google the lyrics to that one song that I can't quite remember the chorus to.

Once I get into a rhythm with my writing things tend to go better, and I feel much less like I'm trying to squeeze out my words as if I'm trying to fit a koala into a wine bottle.

And, of course, as I get into my "writing zone," I hear a pathetic meow come from the other room.  Santeria, my rather danger prone one-year old cat, has managed to get stuck upside down from the back of the chair, her tiny hind claws stuck in the material.

Well writing focus, it was nice of you to stop by, but I should probably go rescue my cat.

As this is the first post in a brand new baby blog, I felt this was an appropriate failing of mine to admit.

Am I the only one who has this inability to start projects? I would love to hear any and all input, particularly if you can tell me how to avoid my dilly-dallying ways without the use of a cattle prod. 


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