Procrastination, Inspiration and More…

Rejoice! Rebuild!
The storm has passed
(The Next Storm ~ Frank Turner)

In a way it’s been a weird week. In another way it wasn’t weird at all, just the usual hassle of work and life and my tendency to feel overwhelmed and inadequate in every thing I do and to wallow in self-pity and let myself be dragged down by it.

My biggest problem these days is that I often seem unable to focus on one particular activity (task, chore, whatever) long enough to actually get somewhere with it. Like sorting through the assembled mess on my kitchen table or my desk or in my shelves. Or to do the laundry not just last minute or to iron the few items that needs ironing right away instead of letting them pile up on the ironing board in my bedroom. And that’s just the household side of my life, it’s not much better in other aspects like getting things done for the local Greens or giving some more thought to the detailed vacation planning for my trip to the Channel Islands in September.

I’ve always had the tendency to procrastinate, but it feels like it’s getting worse with every year. Or every month in this year. There always either seems to be something more interesting or more fun to do than this particular activity or said activity seems so dreadful and dull and too huge to be tackled right away anyway, so I just postpone it till… the end of time and instead spend time on twitter or somewhere else on the internet. Which is procrastination at its purest form and a lot of times it’s neither urgent or captivating  but sometimes actually kind of boring, when I’m honest. Still seems to beat the alternative of doing something, anything useful.

Which must sound really, really crazy for normal people.

It’s like my attention span has drastically shrunk these days. Although that’s not quite right for all things. Recently I’ve started reading a lot more than in the past few years and when a story manages to grab my attention (like Jojo Moyes’s novels often do) I can focus on reading for hours on end very well :-) I just wish I could use that enthusiasm and focus on something like sorting my socks or the stacks of papers on my desk or thoroughly cleaning my windows or…

I really suck at being a grown-up, I think!

When I changed the title of this blog at the end of last year I was determined to try and live by the quote:

before we get bored, let’s be inspired…

To be more inspired and productive and to not succumb to the lure of procrastination. But it seems like I’ve still missed the inspiration to actually DO something about my habit of wasting my time or to just change things in some way. Maybe the new look of this blog will give me a push into the right direction, because while I was changing themes last night (on a whim, like usual) I had to decide what to do with the title/header. I opted for including the title in the header image on the startpage instead of having it written above it. And while trying out various designs, I had to type these few words into various boxes, photos etc. and at some point it hit me, that I chose those words for a reason! And that I should maybe finally try to live by them. At least a bit more than before…

To be fair – to myself, most of all – I have to state, that I haven’t been completely unproductive in all aspects of my life recently. I haven’t yet figured out how to overcome the procrastination habit. But for the past three weeks I’ve been focusing my “mental energy” (if that’s what you want to call it) on trying to lose some weight. mostly by really paying attention to what I eat! And it’s been successful so far, which is of course motivation to keep going.

Writing a third blog post in one week, seems like another step in the right direction. Even though the first two were similar whiny posts about my weird life these days. There will be other stuff in the future, I hope. Another (short) Frank Turner concert review, maybe? I plan to see him on stage again tomorrow night, as long as the weather permits. It’s openair at a music festival in Cologne and the gig will take place no matter how bad the weather will be, but I’m not sure at what point I’ll opt out of it…

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