Procrastination

When you avoid tasks as long as I do, you realize that procrastination is a an art and lot of hard work.

To procrastinate long enough, you really have to be creative with your excuses. You have to want to avoid something bad to find reasons that are perfectly logical. You have to get others to agree that they are perfectly logical reasons too.

Knitters have a built in procrastination response. Thankfully. When it is particularly bad, there is no end to the projects we start in order to ease our unrest. Need to clean through the closet? Start a scarf. Need to get down and clean out the deep freeze? Start a sweater. Whatever task is at hand, we have a ready counter knitting project with which to avoid.

I like to look at my stash when I'm trying to avoid things. I just tidied my stash, so I feel pretty comfortable showing it to you. No this isn't all of it. Nor is this. There are a couple bins of it, cottons, and a nice tidy box of Baby Ull for those emergency baby things that pop up, tucked behind my chair. Oh, and goodness I was forgetting the lace. I have a couple or three small storage boxes on shelf, pretty boxes filled with my laces. I was too lazy to move the chair or I would have showed you that too.

My stash is at my own personal level of comfort. (Those who know me know, know of my little legume problem of 2001, which we are still eating up - pea soup anyone?) I am proud of my stash. There is almost no knitting emergency I can't cover, and almost no knitting I wish to do that I don't already have a yarn waiting for it. I am knee deep in yarn, and I like it.

So why am I going on about procrastination and showing off my stash? It is a rather strange thing to be talking about. To procrastinate, of course.

I write to procrastinate too. I really ought to be editing and getting my final proposal off for the class I hope to teach in the fall. I ran rough outline past my boss yesterday and she seemed to feel I was going in the right direction. Today, I'll tidy it up and send it in formally. I'm just a little nervous. I know I have a long way to go, and a lot of knitting to do should the proposal be accepted, but I am just tickled pink to be doing this. What a thrill to get the chance.

I'll stop worrying about what else I have to do, stop trying to avoid the finality of getting there, stop worrying about am I ready enough, and will just click that little submit button.

Sometimes you just have to hold your breath, pinch your nose and just dive in. Here is hoping there is water at the bottom. Or yarn.