Procrasti-Nation

Now begins the season of not wanting to do anything new or worthwhile except pile blankets upon blankets until you're pressed into the couch like an autumn leaf set between sheets of wax paper under a rock, waiting for motivation or necessity to seep back in in significant enough quantities to facilitate action.

Or, at least it seems so now on a lazy Sunday in late November. If you're not in the US, Thanksgiving is a meaningless bit of trivia under the fourth Thursday of the penultimate month on your calendar, but I think the vibe is the same in most of the Western world: We might physically be here, but our bags are packed and we're 90% checked out until the number of the year flips a little over a month from now.

Back when I worked in an office and dealt with international contacts and suppliers, there were similar slow periods in which you couldn't reliably get a response for the better part of a calendar month — August in Europe, January in Asia — and while the lack of urgency on the other end of the email could be vexing, I definitely respect the lack of hustle.

So I try to strike a balance between being productive and not driving myself nuts with a need to be busy, which sometimes comes crashing down when no one else is expected to be busy either and I still need to get something done. For example, I'm sitting on a couple of audio recordings that I need to edit into podcast episodes for a thing I thought would be out earlier this week, but every time I sit down to do it, I find a reason to delay. My Magic Mouse isn't charged. Or I have to make food and fancy drinks for our low-key holiday meal. Or I have paid work that is more important to complete once I open the laptop. Or I've only napped for an hour and a half and I think another 90 minutes will fix me.

You get the picture.

Once I get used to a schedule I am pretty good about keeping it, but when I break it, it often feels hard to come back to and less reliable than it once was, like a fractured bone that is reset but not reinforced, waiting to fail catastrophically at the most inopportune time. I have some stuff I really need to get the ball rolling on in the near future, but now that that ball is at rest, I am having a hard time remembering where I was pushing it and why, and I'm worried that the universally lackadaisical vibe of the coming month is going to make it too easy for me just to shrug my shoulders and wait for the world to get moving again to provide the necessary momentum to get started. Well, not worried, exactly. A trifle concerned, maybe. Also, tbh, a little sleepy. I'll just set an alarm for 90 minutes and then get back to it.

Sure I will.