A moment of brutal honesty.

As the title of this blog suggests I am going to be completely and brutally honest with myself and anyone who takes the time to read this post. If you have long ago decided to stop reading my struggling, intermittently updated blog I can not really blame you, if you are still reading I thank you profusely for hanging in there!

Let's start with the obvious, and a point I have dedicated a whole post to in the past... I am a procrastinator! With all good intentions I keep putting things off till later, I make excuses for not doing something right this moment and then before I know it the time is too late to start, so I promise myself I will do it tomorrow. Tomorrow I find other things to take up my time, or struggle to catch with looming deadlines.

After a while I feel guilty for not doing something and actively look for ways to avoid it. A great example of this is (and I am not proud to admit this publicly but I am being brutally honest) washing the dishes. I have gone almost a whole week without filling a sink with water and washing our dishes. The first night is easy, I assure myself I will get to them in the morning, of course I choose the extra hour of sleep before getting ready for the day job over washing last nights dishes. So now I tell myself after work I'll do them, after work I am tired and the last thing I want to do is wash dishes just to dirty more. I tell myself I'll do them after dinner, now we have a HUGE pile of dirty dishes and my tummy is full, I just want to relax before bed. Three or four days of this and there are no clean pots and pans, I really should wash the dishes, it looks like it will take hours though so instead we have a take-out night...YAY no cooking and no dishes...except for the ones I am now ignoring! I turn the ever mounting pile of dishes into a subconscious elephant in the room, when I finally get around to doing them it takes less time then I thought and I feel so much better for having finished them, I promise myself to wash the dishes every day....but maybe not tonight’s dishes...I'll do them tomorrow!

Lets take this scenario now and apply it to every part of my life. My Upcoming wedding, walking the dog, Facebook, Twitter, my writing and both my blogs. The only place I don't seem to fall into the procrastination trap is my day job, which is quite odd because my writing means so much more to me than working retail! Days off are so stressful because I don't know what to do first or how to catch up with all the things I have put on hold. I haven't had contact with my celebrant in 4 months now and she is waiting for the forms I have to fill in, I should do this, but will it shock her to hear from me? I could easily talk myself out of contacting her at all and she is a lovely lady. It is so bad that I am even telling myself I don't need to get married we should just call the whole thing off and stay the way we are now...except I really really want to be married, I want to be Mrs Saunders legally not just as a pen name! Best I stop procrastinating and get in touch then, right?

The second part of the shameful lack of productivity in my non-work life is I lie!

Mostly to myself and possibly not always on purpose, is it still lying if when I tell Mr Saunders I am going to work on my WIP I mean it? I noticed the other day I don't make decisive statements it is always “I think I am going to”, “maybe I will”, “I might” or “I will try”, that way if I don't do what I said I have an easy out, I never said I was definitely going to do that. I often make plans to hang out with people and back out of them later, because I really didn't want to do it in the first place, if I have kept plans I have made with you then you are someone important in my world. I should just be honest and say, I don't think that sounds like something I would enjoy, instead I say that sounds fun I will try really hard to make it. The truth is It doesn't sound fun, I don't want to do it, I am too much of a homebody to enjoy going out (even to your house) but I will try and talk myself into it. Maybe I should try just saying the truth.

My writing is again the sticky one here, I love writing, and while editing my WIP is slow and arduous and not as much fun as coming up with the story I enjoy it when I finally make myself sit down and open the editing suit. I wake up many mornings and convince myself I will write/edit, yet the day gets on and I never come and sit down at the computer. This moment right here is the second time I have sat at the computer since Sunday (it is now Wednesday), before that it was three months since I looked at my Facebook, twitter account or even spent any remarkable time near a computer. I sit here now telling myself it just isn't good enough and I will do better! But how can I trust myself? My integrity is truly lacking when it comes to doing what I set out to do. It must be time to start doing what I say I will and not agreeing to things that do not sound fun, there is no shame in being content with a quiet lazy life. People may think it is rude to turn down an invitation because you just don't feel like leaving the house on a weekend, but isn't not showing up or making excuses for not being there after saying you will even ruder?

I'm not sure I can do much about being a procrastinator, but I am positive I can improve the integrity of my internal dialogue, no longer will I say “yes but” from now on I will say “no because”, I will not make brash statements that I will blog weekly and check Facebook and Twitter daily, but I will try and be around more, I will try to not let three months of procrastination and excuses pass by and if it does I will be honest about it. Juggling life is hard, Management in retail is time consuming, I need time to decompress, and sometimes I just want to spend time with Mr Saunders or my daughter. However I am going to make an effort to be more visible and keep plodding away at my WIP. I wanted to be ready to look for a publisher by the end of 2013, that is not going to happen, I'm not going to make a rash statement or promise here but lets aim for Easter. If that doesn't work, Christmas 2014.

Do you think I can do it? What have you been procrastinating over? Maybe we can work together!