Dirty Little Secret

Dear Friends and Family,

I have something to tell you: I’ve been less than honest.

You know how when we’re with Strangers Who Ask Me What I Do and I say with an ironic smile that “I’m blissfully unemployed”? And you laugh nervously and quickly step in to say, with obvious pride, “Actually, Melissa is a Writer," lest the Stranger get the wrong impression?

You know how when it’s just us, when the Stranger is not around, and you ask me what I’m working on? And you are so careful not to show your concern and so I’m real careful to sound all excited and confident as I tell you about my collection of short stories? And how I might turn one of the stories into a novel? And about my ideas for a science-related nonfiction book?

Bear with me. This is hard.




I’m not really doing any of that.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to be doing all those things. I think about them all the time. Then I spend all day at my desk not doing any of it.

Here’s how it works:

• I shuffle to the kitchen and make my coffee, shuffle over to my desk and sit down to write.
• Decide I should ease into it - check email, pay bills, surf a little. (Oo, is it Thursday? New posts up at Savage Love at www.thestranger.com and Dear Prudence at www.slate.com, my two favorite advice columnists.) Read other snarky social and political commentary on Slate. Check the headlines on CNN.com and Charlotte.com.
• Realize I’ve been surfing for an hour, tell myself I should write.
• Play solitaire. Twenty minutes pass. Tell myself I should be writing. Give myself ten more minutes or a winning hand, whichever comes first.
  
• Win the next hand.
• Deal a new hand immediately. (I said ten more minutes didn’t I?) An hour later, I CRTL-Q, disgusted with myself.
• Go make a sandwich and think about all the writing I’m going to do after lunch.
• Ease into writing by throwing in a load of laundry, answering emails.
• Play solitaire, pretending that I am letting all my ideas "percolate".
• Meet friends for happy hour and tell everyone how well the writing is going.
• Hate myself.
  

This goes on all day every day until a couple of days (ok, hours) before a deadline. Then I will work like mad in as much time as I’ve left myself, producing some work that will pass, but which I am never happy with. It’s never my best effort. Still, like I said, it’ll do. It’s like my mind knows exactly how much time I need to make something that won’t embarrass me.

Procrastination as a productivity tool - who knew?

But now I have no more deadlines. I have graduated and the freelance contract I had has ended. As you’ve heard, it’s not like I don’t have projects to work on. I don’t lack ideas. I don’t lack time, I don’t lack money (for now).

What I lack is discipline.

The stakes are high. I love my life. I have a sunny little apartment in an old building that’s been refurbished beautifully. The french doors by my desk look out on the lush green of well-established trees in this little hamlet of a neighborhood. My living room and dining room are lined with bookcases. My kitchen windows overlook the pool, and it’s like having a window on Melrose Place (but with more skin). My commute consists of walking down the hall (but only if I want to). I can work in my pajamas (and often do). I can schedule lunch dates every day (two or three times a week is more common); take the afternoon off and go to the park (I have never done this, but I like knowing I could.)

You get the idea. . . You can imagine why the longer I am out of corporate 9-to-5 office job, the less I can imagine ever going back.

I’m doing what I really want to be doing.

Correction: I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see if I can make a living out of doing what I want to be doing. Every day I sit down at my desk, and I don’t do it.
I don’t even know if I could sell or publish any of these projects; What I do know is there’s not even a chance of publishing if I don’t write something. (It turns out that putting words on paper is a critical part of the job description of a writer.)

How can I want something so badly, and not be able to do it?

My new project is to find out.

Welcome to the Procrastination Chronicles.