The Usual Modes of Procrastination of an Irregular Writer
I typed out a hundred words before realizing the idea wasn’t worth pursuing. A few moments of idly running my fingers over the keys I decided to not take it any further, but would I save those hundred words, or erase them and start anew? I wasted a few more minutes pondering it over, before pressing down on the backspace button. I’d write something else.
An old idea came to mind, and not allowing it to fade away, I made quick work of changing the font size for the heading and typing out the title. It looked great on the blank document. This was what had been wrong with the previous document.
It hadn’t possessed a title which reminded me of the belief about names possessing some kernel of power, and finding a name for each piece of writing I would formulate from thoughts to words was a necessary feat to complete. Unfortunately for the words I had deleted, I couldn’t give them a name, or a direction, and hence, they had held no power over me, and I had gotten rid of them. It wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I was the author, and I had carelessly let the words go to waste. Guilt prodded me with its knobbly fingers, but I shoved it back. Who had the time to mourn words, when they had more to write? I decided if someone else, not me.
I stared at the title, starting to feel it, but the feeling left me all at once, in a whoosh like a gust of wind that leaves as suddenly as it whizzes past you. It wasn’t like I had given thought to it before. There was a well thought out plan, a page filled with black scribbles which proved the brainstorming process, and a neater page, with more organized writing – scribbles nevertheless, it was just how I wrote – which was the end result of all that thinking. I had the beginning, the middle, and the end down, I swear, but I could still not feel it.
Distractedly, I minimized the document and switched to the YouTube tab. It was the music, I decided. The music was all wrong, and it wouldn’t let me write to the best of my ability, which was absurd because I was the one who had put it on. Any power it held over me could be instantly taken back if I was to press pause, and I did, but this author knew that the silence would be overbearing. What I needed was something familiar to write to, so guess who willingly jumped into the endless pit of music I call my YouTube history?
Before I knew it, an hour had passed before I thought back to what had been the original task. Yes, writing. The title looked like a harassed patient at the doctor’s office. The patient had come to be diagnosed and treated, but the doctor had given him a number tag, told him to wait, and had entirely forgotten about the patient’s presence. We might want to consider that there was only one patient in the waiting room.
Ashamed and a little disgusted at my own procrastination, I erased the title and promptly asked my emotions to take a U-Turn back to wherever they had come from because I had to get this done, and without any emotional blackmail…from my own emotions?
It was after I had written this, dear reader, that I almost screamed thinking of the title.
