Wednesday, August 15, 2007

How to Waste Time by a Professional Procrastinator

I have acquired two new obsessions. They manage to eat away quite a lot of my time, which, considering the stuff that I really should be getting on with, is a bit silly. Boy and I sat down and wrote the To Do List which has 17 items, which I must do before Saturday. The items vary between Very Important and Urgent and so far today I've done 1 thing. I really can Procrastinate for England, it is slightly ridiculous.

A few weeks ago, Boy bought Oblivion for his XBox 360. It's a fantasy role-playing game. It's stunning. I'm a dark-elf, encased in armour wandering around Cyrodiil, a province of Tamriel doing quests. I get to beat people up, explore caves, go swimming with slaughter-fish, ride a dappled horse, swing my sword around, gamble, drink and generally create mayhem. I have been tasked with saving the heir to Tamriel, but quite frankly with everything else I've got going on at the moment, I'm procrastinating that quest too. OMG, I procrastinate virtually as well!

Unfortunately, Boy has bought the Transformers game today. Humpf. Up until today, I could interrupt his game, have a go on Oblivion for an hour or so, and then we'd just swap around. Now I have to beg, plead, cajole and threaten. Double humpf.

I was thinking back on last summer and how much I was worrying about my baby growing up. It's funny, I look across at my Boy and I see a young man now. This year he left his childhood behind and entered with confidence the world of a teenager, a far more dangerous and scary place. He's settled into high school and works hard, he avoids trouble and seems to have good, positive friendships. I see the man to come and am exceptionally proud. His sense of humour is so dry and sarcastic; he just creases me up; I really enjoy his company.

I've also discovered the joys of Facebook. I know people have said that all kinds of nasties can creep out of the woodwork, but I've found myself to be nasty-free. Besides, you don't have to accept people you don't want. It's got these really fun applications that you can add to your page at the moment I've been wasting time with the iLike application. I've been loading up clips and videos of my favourite music and making soppy dedications to my Viking. It just eats time. But it's so much fun. By the way, if you want to be my virtual friend, drop me an e-mail and I'll add you. I'll buy you virtual beer, fish for your acquarium, flowers for your garden and we can compare music tastes. Just think, we can procrastinate together.

4 comments:

  1. I remember when I was about 12 the English teacher asked what it meant - procrastination that is.
    I was the only one who knew because my mum told me off for procrastinating all the time.
    I've learned to live with it now - I get there in the end....just.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:28 pm

    I always liked the old story about how the Irish Gaellic tongue possesses about fifteen different words approximating to the spanish "Manana", but none conveying quite the same order of urgency...

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  3. Anonymous7:56 am

    I am the queen of the to-do list - I can procrastinate over my to do list for the best part of a morning and have it all divided up into sections of 'in next hour'; 'today'; 'this week'; 'this month' and it totally rocks in all different colours too...

    Just don't get facebook tho

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  4. kaz ~ I've resigned myself to the fact that today, I'll be running round like a blue-arse fly trying to get things done. Packing will happen tonight.

    cogidubnus ~ that's brilliant. I'll have to look up some of those words, then at least I can say I'm procrastinating with style.

    NM ~ wow, multi-coloured To Do Lists. When I was in a proper job, I used to use the Task section of Outlook to show my boss all the activities I was doing. I then went on to prepare reports in Word with boxes and little clip arts to show where I was in the task. Which was great, it used to take me at least 3 hours to get everything just right. I used to save that task for the feeling a bit fragile times.

    ReplyDelete

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