C'mon pencil...... make words

Today, I finished my essay. That's the same one that I’ve been utterly failing to finish for some weeks now. In traditional me fashion, I did spend 8 hours on Sunday aggressively putting it off. I sat on the sofa from 10am until 6pm contemplating my next move, and when that arrived it was hardly earth-shattering, although it was in the direction of the computer. I felt heart-warmed by such affirmative action.

Then today, in between doing actual work in the office, I thought about how to get going on the last chunk of the essay. I thought about it a lot. I wondered why I was so prone to putting things off until the last conceivable moment, and beyond sometimes. I gave long and detailed consideration to this unproductive habit. I even looked up a website for Chronic Procrastinators and whilst reading about this tragic condition, I wondered “What does it say about me? That instead of writing my overdue essay, I am sitting here reading a website about procrastination.” I surmised that the person who wrote the website probably wrote it whilst they were supposed to be doing something else. And of course that the people reading it were definitely supposed to be doing something else.

I also thought about Spongebob putting off his ‘What not to do at a stop sign’ essay until 8.57am on the morning it was due in. I felt briefly much better about my own inability to get going. Perhaps I should stop using cartoon characters as a personal barometer.

Finally I arrived home and forced myself to sit and type, no matter what utter drivel emerged. I thought, “I can edit it afterwards”. Wise words indeed. Well it appeared to work on this occasion although whether it has produced anything worth my lecturers valuable time, waits to be seen.

If the essay had been called ‘What not to do when you should be writing an English essay’, I may have had an awful lot to say.