If there were some kind of prize for procrastination, it would surely go to me. Whenever I have anything looming that I don’t want to do, I can bury my head in the sand or suddenly become pre-occupied with anything and everything else.
For instance, when I was writing a book for a fashion brand, I was suddenly in the best shape of my life, my flat was immaculate and all my invoices were up-to-date because I suddenly found the enthusiasm for doing anything but writing about fashion; I would get a rush of motivation to hang up clothes from my floordrobe (heap of clothes on the floor), unclog the drains and even do the piles of washing up that I’d hidden in the cupboard under the sink. Pretty much anything else seemed more appealing than sitting in front of my laptop and writing.
The book, of course, remained unwritten until the deadline was right on top of me.
Invoices are another thing I put off. I have people around the world who owe me money, but because I can’t be bothered to trawl through my emails and find out how much they owe me, gather together my banking details and generally do tedious admin, they remain unpaid.
It’s a common saying that, ‘if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way, if not you’ll find an excuse’. If that were true then there is little to nothing I’m interested in other than watching Netflix in bed.
Even getting a giant iced coffee on the weekend, which is one of the highlights of my day, usually means a good hour or so of mustering up the energy to be bothered to get dressed, unlock my bike, blah blah blah. I absolutely love going to the gym, but some nights I’ll come up with every excuse under the sun not to go.
My new project that I’m super excited about is a blog about women in sports. It’s a passion project and it’s pretty much all I think about or talk about. But, even still, I haven’t got it up and running. There’s always a reason; the web domain is too pricey (I’ve finally bought it), I don’t know what my angle is (pretty sure I know now), I haven’t got any good photos…. etc, etc. The list of excuses are endless and, after wracking my brains to try and figure out why I put off doing stuff like this, I can only think that, in this case it’s a bit of a fear of failure. Some of my procrastination problems are definitely more a lack of interest than a fear of failure but, with this one, I think that’s the problem.
I have dreams that this website will be one that changes women’s lives and help them eat in a more sane way (no detox rubbish), embrace their jiggly bits and enjoy sports.
I think, if it barely caused a ripple, I would be distraught and wouldn’t really know what to do with my life if it didn’t make any impact. I feel as though it’s my calling and, if I prove to be a bit ineffectual then… I guess I’ll have a lot of soul-searching to do. While I’m procrastinating it’s still a delicious possibility. It’s like the career equivalent of lying in bed daydreaming about what’s outside.
