I'll write the title later

My alarm goes off at 7am every weekday. I get out of bed around 8:30. There's a Second Cup that opened a block away from my house and it has become my new "office space" for writing my thesis. I plan on heading there around 10:00 every morning and putting in a solid 6 hours. I get there around 2 and work until about 6. Intended 6 hours always translates to realistic 4 hours, doesn't it? Right? Or is it just me? I have been distracting myself lately by reading more blogs and it's prompted me to revisit mine. I haven't touched this dusty whatever-this-is in over a year. I admit it; I have a procrastination problem.

So in true Jessica form, I figured I'd click on that scary "new post" button and fire off an inspirational rambling that will put the Nike slogan to shame! Then I realized that the simple act of interacting with this blog has essentially brought my procrastination to a pause. Maybe not a screeching halt, but at least a slight hesitation.

I don't know why I'm terrified of writing. I seem to work very hard at finding other things to do that don't involve the one thing I claim to want to do more than anything else in the world. Why don't I write more? Who knows. Perfectionism? Fear of failure? Finger cramps? I'm confident that at least one of my problems is fear of bad sentences--and I write a lot of them! But writing an encyclopedia of bad sentences in September leaves room for chiseling out the bad in February.

Let me take a moment to redeem myself slightly. I did accomplish a lot last year. I attended a conference in Spain in April, I spent the summer in Quebec City étudier le français. I joined some committees, did some fundraising, met lots of people in academia, and got all my coursework done. All things considered, I can network and cross off to-do lists with the best of them. I just can't bring myself to write.

So here's a bit of advice for me. Stop being so hard on myself, write bad sentences, write them often, and have a long talk with that alarm clock.