Shut Up and Do It

29Jul08

Well, the time has come (okay, it arrived some time ago and now it’s tapping its foot impatiently) to kick my own ass — hard. I’m finally at that point at which I have to blog less (which means reading your fine words less often as well, I think, just for now) and start working more.

I’ve been a bit like a ghost around here, wandering around with my books and pen, flitting from my desk to the kitchen table to the porch to the patio set outside, but not really getting anything done. As you know, I’m prone to talking much more about what I have to do rather than actually doing it (in fact, this post is rather long, isn’t it?). And I’ve never considered myself a procrastinator! In fact, I abhor procrastination!

A while back James said, “Quit friggin’ around with the idea, btw. Just do it. Face the stupid fear holding you back from taking action on something you KNOW you can do, and do it already.” I imagine he was sitting at his desk at the time, his hand flying up after reading the post he responded to, almost tipping his Maudite. Furiously, he crushed his cigarette into an ash tray and said to himself, ” Tabarnac de câlisse! These friggin’ Ontarians! Do I have to do everything for them? Shut up and do it, already! Crisse!” And then he punched out that message to me.

In any case, not only James and Harry but my husband and all of you and others I’ve told about EditQuest (I keep feeling it needs bold or special text) are waiting. I’ve been strongly feeling a fear of disappointing you with regard to this blog and not blogging regularly or keeping up with your blogs and commenting, but the truth is, yesterday and today I didn’t feel much inspired to write anything. Instead, I worked on stuff I had to do: some web text for my father, articles for my husband’s site, stuff for a client.

I need to get down and dirty here. I need to focus, to get with the flow Ellen wrote about. I have a site that needs to be up soon and when I think of the bank of posts I have to write and all the other stuff like the ebook and report and such, I feel half excited and half full of dread. How will I do anything else, let alone work on the edits coming in? (The next edit is about the history of taverns, btw, how cool is that?)

I guess this is me saying (in a roundabout and procrastinatory kind of way) that I’m telling myself to shut up and do it. It doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t blog here at all, but it does probably mean I won’t post every day or even every other day or even every third day. For the next little while, until I get the EditQuest text done, I’ll only post when I really can.

Yuck. That felt blech. (I wonder if I’ll hold to it.) But I know others are feeling the same way, that this blogging and keeping up with others’ blogs is time-consuming and must not take priority over family and work, as much as blogging is so much fun and the community is addictive and I really swear it’s cleared up my stressed-out skin! Most of you don’t post every day, anyway (just never mind that MwP does, they’re in a freaky league all their own, I think! And that James, well. He just shuts up and does it, see), so I know you’ll be okay with me not posting as regularly, too.

I’m not leaving entirely, of course. If you get very lonely, though, and pine for my voice (oh, likely it will be the other way ’round and before you know it, I’ll be posting again), you can dig around in my archives, though I’m warning you, the early posts don’t have titles, and they may freak you out a little.

Right, well. This is me blowing a kiss before I go off to work. G’bye dear(s), see you later!

Filed under: blogging   |  14 Comments
Tags: blogging, freelancing, procrastinating, work