cleaned the pantry cupboard, cleaned the cutlery drawer, cleaned the kitchen counters, swept the floor, did the dishes, tidied the living room, can you tell I am trying to put off writing?
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@hedders Truly a puzzling mystery, that last one.
Seriously, though, adult life is a LOT, and the longer I spend out of work the more it is driven home to me that modern-day capitalism was built on the assumption that someone would be at home to handle these things.
I feel so seen right now
Some years ago, I left a nice job at a nice company and took a bit of a sabbatical from work in general. Did stuff around the house, arranged food, did the laundry, and spent time with my then girlfriend.
I can't remember ever being so relaxed and yet so appalled at how much work I still had to do. And that's without $dayjob stuff. I am working but part-time and I'm happier for it.
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god I hate starting tasks. starting tasks is the WORST.
doing tasks? fine. often great, actually.
starting tasks? terrible.
@astronomerritt I was talking to The Boy about managing college work recently (which he’s struggling with; the management, not the actual work) and suggested to him that sometimes it was hard to start A Thing unless The Thing was Really Interesting or Really Urgent.
Bless him, he looked at me like I was some sort of mind reading magician
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@astronomerritt yes. But I’ve always been a horrible procrastinator. I’ve spent a lifetime developing the self-discipline to force myself to get through the stuff I have to do to make a living. It seems wholly unreasonable that I should have to do the same for life admin, and on the same day.
@hedders @astronomerritt I hear you, mate. Procrastination is my super power (or kryptonite, depending how you look at it).
And as the tasks pile up I get more nervous about starting things. It’s horrible, and was a large part of what finally made me talk to my GP and mental health practitioner last year.
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@astronomerritt I was talking to The Boy about managing college work recently (which he’s struggling with; the management, not the actual work) and suggested to him that sometimes it was hard to start A Thing unless The Thing was Really Interesting or Really Urgent.
Bless him, he looked at me like I was some sort of mind reading magician
@WiteWulf So much of adulthood is about finding ways to make yourself start a task when you really, really do not want to. The boy will learn, hopefully
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god I hate starting tasks. starting tasks is the WORST.
doing tasks? fine. often great, actually.
starting tasks? terrible.
@astronomerritt need to build a crew of starters, mid workers, and finishers
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@astronomerritt need to build a crew of starters, mid workers, and finishers
@jimfl ideally, yes. unfortunately, nobody is going to start making dinner for me
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cleaned the pantry cupboard, cleaned the cutlery drawer, cleaned the kitchen counters, swept the floor, did the dishes, tidied the living room, can you tell I am trying to put off writing?
tell you one good thing about being a writer: you can end up with a really clean house!
@astronomerritt My wife introduced me to the term "procrasticleaning" and damn if it's not right on the button.
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@astronomerritt My wife introduced me to the term "procrasticleaning" and damn if it's not right on the button.
@just_one_bear Please thank your wife for me, that's genius and I will be using it henceforth.
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@hedders Truly a puzzling mystery, that last one.
Seriously, though, adult life is a LOT, and the longer I spend out of work the more it is driven home to me that modern-day capitalism was built on the assumption that someone would be at home to handle these things.
@astronomerritt It really was, wasn't it?
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@hedders @astronomerritt I hear you, mate. Procrastination is my super power (or kryptonite, depending how you look at it).
And as the tasks pile up I get more nervous about starting things. It’s horrible, and was a large part of what finally made me talk to my GP and mental health practitioner last year.
@WiteWulf Yeah, it gets overwhelming fast. Like, this morning for some reason I had built up in my head the simple task of calling the insurance company into this massive ordeal. It wasn't, of course. The worst bit was just navigating the "Press 1 if you're calling about something completely irrelevant, press 2 to lose the will to live, press 3 to go live on an island and raise chickens, while you're waiting, did you know we have a completely useless chatbot on our website?" business.
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@hedders Do you ever wonder how many times we have to sit there with a finished task and think "wow, that wasn't painful at all, wish I'd done it earlier" before we actually START doing things earlier?
@astronomerritt @hedders Haha. That was me yesterday. A non-urgent but important task that has been living in my head for 11 months (!) got done finally. By me. Bravo, Pete. It took 5 minutes. It is highly unlikely that future behaviour will change from this experience.
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