The greatest accomplishments of humanity come from genius…and procrastination.
One of my favorite things about Nanowrimo is that while I am an avid procrastinator during the rest of the year, during Nanowrimo I find novel ways to up my procrastinating. This might be because Nanowrimo is already something out of my comfort zone and therefore new neurons are firing and creating all sorts of strange ideas, but also because it feels too cheap and easy to procrastinate the normal way.
It works like a slight of hand, if I can just find something so outside the realm of “real” procrastination I can legitimize procrastinating enough to myself to get away with it. I’ll give you an example: While I can (and do) check Tumblr to procrastinate at any other time of the year, if I check Tumblr while I’m writing my novel it’s really hard to justify my behavior. I know what I’m doing. I know I shouldn’t check Tumblr when there’s work to be done. On a deep, core level I know the new forms of procrastination I’ve invented are exactly the same but somehow they don’t make me feel as bad. They’re too new and inventive to feel like I am really subverting work as much as I am just “taking care of things I didn’t realize were important”.
Nanowrimo is literally an entire month of putting yourself outside your comfort zone and I respect that to its logical conclusion of new forms of procrastination.
Here are a few of the things I’ve done this month so far to both avoid and simply just put off writing (this is just the last 7 days by the way!):
- Wash all the blankets in the house, even the ones I’m pretty sure were already clean (just in case!)
- Deep clean my kitchen with a toothbrush
- Send myself on walking missions to random parts of town for no reason – twice!
- Re-organize the entire house
- Try the KonMari method where I stand around picking up things around my house and considering them useful or not
- Start a really intense exercise program I have no intention of actually doing and complete two days in the same day
- Intensively research information for someone else’s story
- Watch 10 hours of competitive e-Sports
- Wrote 7 pages of material for a new cookbook I probably won’t ever complete
- Compared video cameras and microphones for the YouTube channel I never intend to start
- Planned a trip for a friend
- And probably more that I’m forgetting…
There will absolutely be more procrastination in my future but at least for now I’m keeping this entry short in hopes that I can keep all my best words for my budding novel which is sitting at 12,300 words right now – just ahead of target.
If you think up any great ideas for procrastinating, let me know! I’m always open to ideas! All of them!
PS: To add insult to injury, instead of googling and using a free icon I also spent 20 minutes making that little lightbulb pixel icon/image. I’m in the procrastination weeds deep. Save me.