Procrastination

Writers have many ways of avoiding that empty computer screen—some clean the bathroom, others scrub floors or wash windows, a few go for long walks (for inspiration, of course), still others dig in the garden or mow the lawn. My preferred method of procrastination is cooking, so today, the day I had marked to charge back into my work-in-progress, I made black bean soup and pesto.

I’ve shared my recipe for black bean soup here before, so I won’t repeat it. Suffice to say it is one of those things that I cannot make without spraying it all over the kitchen—counter, wall, floor. The pesto went a bit better, but I also cannot cook without spilling, so now my relatively clean jeans have a big spot of olive oil on them. In my own defense, I will say that cooking from a seated walker is not easy—lots of standing up and sitting down, Probably good exercise.

I am not faithful about my exercises these days. I think that hospital stay demoralized me in more ways than one, and my walking program has taken a backward slide. Some days I can’t imagine walking unassisted. When I say I can’t walk, everyone from my daughters to the technologist at a mammogram yesterday says to me that I am walking, just not alone. So that remains my goal, and days like today when the difficulty of cooking, making the bed, even getting dressed when you have to wheel from one place to another fill me with determination to reach that goal.

But then my days are so busy they get away from me, and I realize it’s nine o’clock and I haven’t exercised, and I’m too tired. Mind you, these are not strenuous exercises—some are done in my desk chair and some standing at a grab bar in the bathroom. But they are tedious. I need to put myself on a rigorous schedule where exercise comes first in the morning (my best time), followed by time spent on the work-in-progress until I reach my daily goal of a thousand words. Takes will power to do that.

On a bright note, I wrote about 500 words on the WIP today. Number four in the Blue Plate Mysteries. Some days I think it’s great; other days I wonder what fool wrote that drivel. Tentative title: “Murder at the Bus Depot.”