Monday, February 24, 2014

Don't Get Too Comfortable...



It's Monday. Sometimes I like Mondays because everyone's out of the house and I enjoy the serenity and chance to work (mostly) undisturbed.

But it's Monday. That means I have to drag myself to the pool.

Swimming and writing evoke the same feelings for me; I love to do both, but each one has aspects that make me a first class procrastinator. For swimming, it's getting out of my toasty, pillow-soft bed. Creaking elbow and aching (formerly broken) toes are telling me that it's okay to miss one day. And that first dive into the water, when it's snowing and freezing outside? That takes a bit of masochism to do it three times a week.

With writing, it's the revisions. Once I know what to do it's not a problem, but forcing myself to sit and think about a plot problem (currently) is worse than going to the pool. But procrastination for avoiding sitting at the desk to fix edits can be good. While I turn over the problem in my head, I clean, do laundry, run errands (because gardening when you still have almost a foot of snow on the ground doesn't make sense), and talk to the cats. (Sometimes that helps!). When a great revelation hits, though, and I know it's going to require going through every last damn sentence (numerous times, ugh), I procrastinate (like now although Mondays are new blog post days, so I'm not really procrastinating, right?).

Logically I can reason that going to the pool regularly is good for my health (summer's coming! bathing suits, ack!) and I sleep better because I'm exhausted. So getting the edits done means I can work on sparkly new project(s).

It's just that I'm so comfortable... not going out in the cold/not sitting at the desk.

But no one ever got anywhere important by staying comfortable. So I'll get my cup of chai latte and tackle those edits.

What do you need to get 'uncomfortable' enough to achieve?

Char