On procrastination.

I was supposed to go to the library today, but decided at the last minute that my time would be better spent at home, checking my email and updating my blog. I think sometimes that my decision-maker is broken.

It's weird, isn't it, that research is always such a daunting task? Even when it's something you love? I'm studying science fiction, and even though I absolutely adore science fiction more than almost anything else in the world, it's sometimes so easy and seductive to just do something else instead, like read the last book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It's like there's a mental block there, or a hurdle: I'm scared that once I start I won't be able to stop, and that the task is so huge that I'll never be able to do it justice. Especially since I've just spent another day procrastinating.

That's the problem with procrastination. It's a self-perpetuating, reflexive system. The more you do it, the more you're tempted to do it, and the bigger and scarier the fear becomes. The huger the workload becomes, the less I want to dive in and tackle it because I know I'll be swamped with regret at all the things I could have done with it if I'd just started it earlier and been more judicious in my time management. Innocent articles sitting by my bed become huge lurking goblins - or worse, chests full of treasure that I won't have left myself the time to appreciate. Unfinished stories lying dormant in the bowels of my computer moulder and crumble, their meaning lost, their plotlines decayed. Potential is being wasted with every moment I while away.

And here I am, writing this and procrastinating. It's all recursive. Surely there's a lesson in there somewhere?