Blame it all on "Law and Order"

It's Monday afternoon. There's a pile of papers in my in-box. And there's a smaller pile in my "out box". And there's an entire checklist on my datebook, that may well stay "unchecked".

For the obsessive compulsive executive, that's as close to a suicide statement as any...leaving unchecked things on a checklist...what?

Sometimes, it just seems that no matter how hard you want to work, the things that distract you are the simplest...a not-too-hot-for-a-change Monday afternoon, a book that's half-read and my personal favorite, spending hours on the "Law and Order" web site. What is it about that show that has me so hooked?

I still have a long way to go before this day is over but something about 4 PM pulls out in me the worst...I get bull-headed (more so than usual, thanks) and outright possessive of my hour and a half that I can sit here and do next-to-nothing and call it "working".

It doesn't matter how much I try to plan my day, 4 PM signals in me the end of the "first half" of the day and the start of the "second half" -- the half that I must feed my family, get afternoon rituals (kids to work, practice, etc) and oh yea, finish out whatever wasn't accomplished during the first half of my day...which today is, not surprisingly from this blog entry, close to nothing.

I am amazingly creative at avoiding work. I can make lists with the best of them. I can plan all sorts of activities in the act of organization. In reality I am creating nothing except a way to stall, a way to plod, a way to self-sabotage on things that truly, truly need my attention.

A seminar to plan that is less than amonth a way.
A class tonight that I'm in no way prepared for.
Appointments tomorrow that I can't even begin to imagine how I'll get it done.

What it boils down to is simply this - procrastination is fear incarnate. Fear of ______ you fill it in -- but whatever it is -- fear of moving forward, fear of checking things off a list, fear of getting something done and finding that it wasn't that hard, and oh, after all, there's 20 more just like that to do...

Fear, pure and simple, is at the base of all the distractions, sidebars, excursions and second lattes.

As much as I don't want to admit it, I'm simply afraid of not knowing where the next lead is going to come from, the next idea, the next inspiration. I find the more that I plod around on cop drama web sites, the more I can hide behind insipid "information" about who is getting married, who is vacationing in the Carribbean and who is planning to be the next guest star.

Diversions as they go, are simply meant to keep us from tackling the big work that is calling to us from those in-boxes, work that when faced probably can tell us a lot more about ourselves than most psychiatry appointments, work that can keep us focused and balanced and all those things that we say - I say -- I want for my life.

Then again, an hour to simply veg may help the synapsis in my brain start firing in all the right ways so that I can be perfectly brilliant at tonight's class, more than prepared for tomorrow's appts and maybe even excited about the new inspiration that starts to creep out at me from around the edges of my work-fried brain.