Wasting Time

Oh, how I wish I could waste time. Being a creative, I'm a practiced procrastinator and an aficionado of useless, time-wasting activities.

Maybe I should first define what I mean by "time-wasting activities"?

1) Trolling the forums over on The Fedora Lounge , looking for leads on vintage suits in styles from the '30s to '50s.
2) Checking my website's referrer logs 213 times/day to see who's coming here from where.

3) At home, setting timers on the DVR to catch as many B science fiction movies and noir thrillers and just about anything shot before 1965 that the device's hard drive will hold.

4) Watching those movies.

What should I be doing?

1) Working on the novel.
1a) Working on a new scene for the novel.

1b) Rewriting the last scene on The Novel (if you use a term twice or more, can you capitalize it like in a legal document…hereafter known as "The Novel"?).

1c) Plotting and devising the complex nuances of narrative for The Novel.

2) Maybe do some work at The Real Job (hah!).

3) Spend time with wife and children (are artists really required to do this?).

At any rate, it would behoove me to do the thing I profess to enjoy the most, but I often avoid it. Like the Plague. It's difficult and demanding and wrings the life out of me. Putting words to paper in a way that makes me feel like I've done a good job is bar none the most difficult thing I've ever done. I used to work 12-hour shifts in a factory. That was hot and extraordinarily hard work. That was also easier. Writing is harrrrrd.

I really should do a little Real Work, then sneak in a few pages of the novel before I go to class and give a presentation on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde I'm utterly and embarrassingly unprepared for.

[sigh]

[shuffles off, depressed, tired]