A Slacker's Confession

Well, here I am.  The young writer slinking back to her keyboard in shame.  Excuse me while I blow off the dust.  That’s a metaphor—my keyboard has been used more than once in the past month, but not in a way that makes me any less guilty.  I’ll explain that in a moment, but first I have to confess a truth about myself that I haven’t wanted to admit:

I, Eileen Michelle O’Connor, am lazy.

I’ve been very good at rationalizing this.  I’m an excellent worker, I tell myself.  Once I’ve made the decision to do something, I do it, and do it well.  For example, when I moved into my apartment, I decided that Saturday would be my cleaning day.  Having made the decision, I held to it.  Saturday I woke up early, unpacked some of my boxes, cleaned my kitchen and my living room, and put things where they belonged.  It took me a couple hours, but I did it.  Now, however, there is more to be done—I have new furniture now and more places to put things.  But Saturday is my cleaning day, and so I’ve decided that I don’t have to clean now.

Continue rationalization, aka making excuses.  But in school, I protest, I never ever sent in an assignment late, and most of the time it was longer than the requirement.  Yeah, whatever.  So maybe some of the time it was longer than the requirement.  I was a college student, and yes, I did that thing where the five-to-eight-page requirement has me writing a five-page paper.  We’ve all done it.  And my assignments in college were different from my own writing.  Those, I had to do.  I did them not for myself, but for others, so it was easier to get my butt in gear and get down to work.

Now, however, there is no one to tell me what to do.  There’s only myself, and as I sit here thinking about what I’ve done in the past ten days since moving here, I have to concede defeat.  I haven’t done what I should be doing.  I haven’t worked on the writing projects I should, only on the ones I feel like working on, the ones that are easy to write.  I haven’t worked as hard as I should on finding a job (though trust me, the pressure on that one is building).  And let’s not go into how long it’s been since I touched this blog.  What I have done is tool around on Facebook or on Stumbleupon or on Pinterest, all virtual tourist traps if I ever saw them.  Oh, and I'm three seasons into an old sci-fi show I used to love.  Not exactly accomplishments of which to be proud.

Self-discipline is hard.  It’s really hard.  Whenever I don’t really want to do something, I’m really good at coming up with excuses to put it off.  Some of it is fear—I’m uncomfortable with strangers, and just the idea of looking for a job is frightening.  But some of it is just plain old laziness.  Let’s see, I could work on some music, or write my blog, or edit my novel…or I could watch videos online.  ‘Stargate SG-1’ it is.  I’m sure many of you have been in the same position.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten to know myself over the past few years.  There are some things that will help.  For me, the most difficult thing is getting started.  Therefore, if I plan something in advance, I’m much more likely to do it.  Saturday is cleaning; Monday is laundry; Wednesday is errands.  I also find that if you space work with play, the former is less mentally draining, and the latter is less guilt-inducing.  I’ll spend an hour writing this morning while a video loads up online.  Then I’ll watch it, and probably at the same time I’ll flip through my recipe book to decide what I’m going to make on Sunday: multitasking is great, too. 

These tricks are useful, but in the end it comes down to knowing what has to be done and just doing it.  To borrow from the endless wisdom of the internet, I have to “quit slackin’ and make shit happen.”  Because after all, I’m on my own now, almost entirely.  Who’s going to make my day if not me?