A weeklong confessional of procrastination

Well, it took a full week before I could do this post. I wrote NOTHING last week. Early on, that was just the way it had to be, but by Thursday, the feelings that I should be writing were taking root in my psyche. Yesterday, it turned to full-on guilt, but I still didn't want to write. I think it has something to do with the fact that I archive by the week versus the month.

Before I talk about procrastination, first let me give you a run down of what happened this past week, and, no, it was nothing dramatic. Then I'd like to discuss content for a minute. Then we'll get to procrastination. Like how I put that off even within the post?

SUNDAY: Okay then, last Sunday, I chose not to post anything about the mixtape. My sister, Aimee, came through with a couple of suggestions, and while they were fine, I just wasn't feeling the energy for the mixtape. Therefore, the mixtape project is on hiatus until after the holidays.

I spent all day doing manual labor, completing many things on the chore list. We also shopped for tile and bought our Christmas tree (yeah, we buy a recently murdered tree each year.) After the holidays we are redoing our kitchen and nook floors. We will post before and after photographs. Plus a running commentary on having contractors invade the home everyday and the challenges of living while the kitchen floor is in transition. Should be enlightening.

By Sunday night, I was only interested in watching football. Which I did. Which I wished I hadn't. But that's for another blog and another time. Suffice to say that I don't take sports outcomes, whether spectating or participating, too seriously anymore. I enjoy the drama or the competition, but I'm over it when the game ends.

MONDAY: I had to get to work right away to attend an all day meeting. The tone was set when I hit a traffic snarl and arrived right as the meeting was supposed to begin. Others arrived late, but this was important, so I let it bother me. Anyway, the meeting was with my supervisor, the CIO, and my peers. We spent the entire day doing a "talent review" of each person who reported directly to one of us that had a supervisory role or some other leadership role. We'll be devoting an entire post to the challenges, rewards, and concerns that I have with this potentially problematic process. By the end of the day, I was mentally exhausted and posting seemed the farthest thing from my mind.

TUESDAY: Another long meeting, this time about our strategy plan for the next three fiscal years. Again, there were pluses and minuses about the process. I might do a post on this, though it is dangerously close to shop talk. We'll see. This meeting took a little more than half a day. I skipped lunch, a very stupid thing to do, and by the end of the day I was brain dead. But that didn't matter because we had a surprise retirement party for one of my colleagues at a decent Italian restaurant. About 40 people were there and a wonderful time was had by all, especially the retiree. I wore a red shirt with green pants and a pair of silly Christmas socks during the day to throw the retiree off the scent of a surprise party. It's the little things that make the con work. Watch "The Sting" to get all the training you need in this area. Needless to say, the party consumed my Tuesday night.

WEDNESDAY: Another full day of "talent review" meetings. Once again I arrived home mentally drained. I went to bed around 8:30, read, took a cat nap, read some more, fell asleep again, woken by noisy kids getting ready for bed, and then couldn't go back to sleep. I went downstairs, tired, but awake, and read until about 1:30 a.m. Finally, I went to sleep and got up again at 5:30.

THURSDAY: So, I was pretty tired with the choppy sleep patterns. And this was my logical Friday. And I was itching to post something, but because I was tired, I wasn't feeling too upbeat about anything. I didn't feel coherent enough to string together sentences. I don't remember doing anything on Thursday night except reading and watching the recorded episode of "30 Rock", which besides "the Office", is the only comedy we watch regularly. I did some listening to contemporary classical, too. And I added some music to Monica's iPod for her and I worked on our investment portfolio. And I slept.

FRIDAY: My "off" day or so I thought. I was going to rise and right all morning. Oh, you readers were going to be blinded by my brilliance and my insightful commentary on the workaday world. The Happy Guy would be back with renewed vigor and purpose. But, uhm, well, Monica is trying out for regional orchestra, so she had to be at practice by 7:30. So I drove her to school. Then, Jocelyn had to go get her hair done and that is actually just a mile from where I work, and she planned on me going with her, so I had to hurry up and get ready. Gabe missed his bus for some reason, so we had to leave even earlier to drop him off at school.

When we got to exit for the salon, we saw the aftermath of a seven car accident that had the main road (Broad St.) through Richmond blocked in both directions. Jocelyn forgot her cell phone. I chided her for it and then discovered that I forgot mine, too. I forgot to bring the novel that I've been reading. So, while Jocelyn got her hair done, I went across the street to Books-A-Million. I browsed for about an hour and bought a book and a magazine. I'll be posting about both of them, I think; the magazine for certain. When I went back to pick up Jocelyn, it was after 11.

So, we were hungry and we went to lunch at the Italian restaurant that I had been to Tueday night for the retirement party. Jocelyn had the veal piccata and a glass of chianti. I had a green peppercorn steak and water. (She also had a Caesar salad.) For desert, we split an "apple crostada" that had a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream in the middle and was dribbled with caramel and powdered sugar. I bought a bottle of a desert wine to go with it. After that, we made the long trek home and being the nascent senior citizens that we are, we slept until Monica arrived home. Well, until 3. Monica's bus had a mechanical problem, so she didn't get home until 3:30.

Gabe arrived home shortly (he is in elementary school and Monica is in middle school.) Then we fiddled around the house--I read my new magazine--and Jocelyn packed some eBay sales up for shipping. She had been complaining about how nothing was selling, then within two hours, she sold nearly a dozen items from her modest online store. We had until six to drop off a couple of packages at the DHL pick-up point. We got there at ten till six. The DHL guy had already been by. Frustration ensued. But, apparently, he came back to pick up our packages. Jocelyn had checked online later that evening.

Monica was starving so we went to Sonic. Great drinks, terrible food. We went to Target and Gabe and I stayed in the car. Again, I had forgotten to bring a book. I wasn't feeling too great and I was getting tired again. Writing was not on my mind. The girls were taking forever. I called. They had run into a mother from field hockey (one of Monica's sports) and were in the midst of a conversation. Finally, it ended, we left, we arrived home, I read, I fell asleep.

SATURDAY: Surely, I could post something on a Saturday. I couldn't. It was the last day of the week. At that point, I didn't want to. I hadn't even gone to see if anyone was reading the blog. I spent Saturday morning sitting at the breakfast counter reading my book (not the new one, but the novel.) Once again, plans were hatched that I was only vaguely familiar with. We were to pick up one of Monica's friends and all of us were going to see a movie. We saw the first showing of "The Golden Compass". I normally read rottentomatoes before I decide to spend money on a movie. I didn't do that this time. Save this one for your Netflix account. Let's see, $34 for movie tickets, plus $32 for popcorn and drinks. Nothing like a $66 afternoon for a pretty mediocre film.

Then we walked around the mall so that my daughter and her friend could shop for other friends. This was not the highest and best use of mine or Gabe's time. We soldiered through it though. By Saturday night, Gabe was immersed in homework and I was back to reading my novel. I was doing nothing of benefit to me or my family. No way was I going to write.

Which brings us to this morning. I haven't even had any food yet, but I had to get ALL of this off my chest.

This post is fairly long, so the next post will be about content.