On Procrastination

Saturday is my only day off in a week. I go to school Monday through Thursday and I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. This has led to a rather childlike love of Saturdays. You know, where the world seemed all bright and shiny because it was the start of the weekend, people. No school! Going out with friends! Granted, it's a more adult (see also, rather teenager-y) version, but still. (No school! No work! Sleeping in!) So, I planned to actually get some work done today, ironically enough.

I have three assignments due in the next week or so. They're not, as far as I can tell, the most strenuous or time consuming assignments, but they do need to be done. And since I had the whole day to myself, I figured I'd make some juice, pour some cereal, and get my ass in gear.

That was ten hours ago.

Here's how my day went:

8:00 a.m. Wake and go upstairs. Let dogs out to eat and pee. Go back to bed.

11:00 a.m. Wake groggily from odd dream involving cake and cheese. Note time, decide to get up and get going. Put on bra, as sleep topless, and go upstairs.

11:01 a.m. Note presence of strange men working on stone on house. Note absence of shirt. Hurriedly throw on boyfriend's hoodie so as not to provide free show for strange men.

11:05 a.m. Turn on TV and eat breakfast. Lament lack of quality television available late on Saturday mornings. Tell self will eat and then hit the books.

12:00 p.m. Try to convince self to move from comfortable chair.

12:10 p.m. Use cat sleeping on lap as excuse to delay work.

2:00 p.m. Engage in short lived insult exchange with idiot former classmate. Remember how much fun feeding internet trolls can be.

2:30 p.m. Turn on Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version). Swear to do homework. Fail. Miserably.

6:00 p.m. Sister comes home. Do barn chores, bring horses in.

7:00 p.m. Watch Hell's Kitchen for second time.

9:00 p.m. Turn on The Two Towers (Extended Version). Swear to do homework. Instead lament missing boyfriend as he lives 1000 km away.

10:00 p.m. Decide to update blog.

10:30 p.m. Wonder when stopped using modifiers when typing.

So yes, clearly I lead an amazingly exciting life. Don't you wish it was yours? I'll probably hammer out those assignments at about 2 a.m. Sunday night/Monday morning. Because I'm good like that.

Sanity, where art thou...

In the Beginning

When I was little, I used to sit on my dad's lap in his big green La-Z-Boy recliner and read to him. We had (and actually still have) these gigantic volumes printed by Disney. They're big, beautifully illustrated anthologies of children's stories. I was little, mind you, and although the memories are vague I recall stumbling my way through them while my dad patiently listened. While a part of me is amazed at his patience throughout this (I mean really, listening to a little girl falter and stumble her way through a book, refusing to accept help and determined to figure out what the big words are all on her own...is that anyone's idea of a good time?), I'm quite certain he enjoyed every second of it.

It's funny, really, I always wanted to read to him. I asked on almost a nightly basis if he had time for a story before bed. And I'm hard pressed to remember him ever saying no, even if he was bogged down in a case that had him up to his eyeballs in paperwork. My twin sister would sit and listen, but only very rarely read. It's the same to this day, really, I love books and reading, and she's really not a fan. There's the occasional mindless chick-lit novel she'll read when she's bored, but I devour books by the likes of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Christopher Paolini, and Terry Goodkind. Books were my friends growing up, replacements for the friends I didn't have from school. When I read The Neverending Story, I could relate to Bastian. I know how it feels to prefer to hide from the real world, so lost in the story that it becomes your reality.

I've found books to be a constant in my life. Where everything else can be so uncertain, and terrifying, and change at the drop of a hat, the written word is safe. It is a constant companion, and gives you somewhere to go when the rest of the world turns its back on you. I find myself trying, time and time again, to write something, anything, that means something to someone. Even if it is just one person, I want to know that something I wrote made some small difference in someone's life. My journey started with those Disney books all those years ago, and while my taste in authors and material may have changed, their presence in my life has not.

So here I sit, in my dad's big green La-Z-Boy recliner. The difference is that now, instead of losing myself in someone else's writing, I'm trying to lose myself in my own.