I know, I know - guilt is a useless emotion
Everyone here is so ready for the holidays, and I feel like I'm stuck back in October. If you were following me in my natural habitat today, you'd have observed the following:
1. Actively procrastinating on the research paper that is hanging on my neck like an albatross. By "actively procrastinating", I mean "opening up the Word file and ignoring it to surf the web".
2. Remember today, the last day of school prior to the winter break, that it might be a decent gesture to present the hardworking women who teach my sons basic skills like, oh, READING, with a token of our holiday goodwill.
3. Scramble to obtain and deliver said tokens.
4. Struggle with guilt that I'm not better prepared for the holiday.
5. Bother to clean the kitchen on my lunch hour, because we're having a new sitter tonight.
6. Struggle with guilt that I'm going to dinner/shopping with Poaikots tonight, instead of finishing paper.
7. Return to PlaceIWork to resume active procrastination. And web surfing.
8. Struggle with guilt for not being in "the holiday mode".
9. Decide that the Santa Claus booty has been purchased for the kids, so screw the rest of the "holiday mode".
10. Struggle with guilt for overbuying said Santa Claus booty.
11. Continue to not finish research paper, which I'm convinced is the only thing standing between me and sweet, sweet holiday mode.
12. Struggle with guilt for not just finishing the stupid paper already, dammit. How hard can it be to take 5 pages of notes and a fairly good outline and turn it into A 15-PAGE PAPER so I can get on with my life already?!?!
13. Struggle with guilt for looking to the Bored Housewives for encouragement.
1. Actively procrastinating on the research paper that is hanging on my neck like an albatross. By "actively procrastinating", I mean "opening up the Word file and ignoring it to surf the web".
2. Remember today, the last day of school prior to the winter break, that it might be a decent gesture to present the hardworking women who teach my sons basic skills like, oh, READING, with a token of our holiday goodwill.
3. Scramble to obtain and deliver said tokens.
4. Struggle with guilt that I'm not better prepared for the holiday.
5. Bother to clean the kitchen on my lunch hour, because we're having a new sitter tonight.
6. Struggle with guilt that I'm going to dinner/shopping with Poaikots tonight, instead of finishing paper.
7. Return to PlaceIWork to resume active procrastination. And web surfing.
8. Struggle with guilt for not being in "the holiday mode".
9. Decide that the Santa Claus booty has been purchased for the kids, so screw the rest of the "holiday mode".
10. Struggle with guilt for overbuying said Santa Claus booty.
11. Continue to not finish research paper, which I'm convinced is the only thing standing between me and sweet, sweet holiday mode.
12. Struggle with guilt for not just finishing the stupid paper already, dammit. How hard can it be to take 5 pages of notes and a fairly good outline and turn it into A 15-PAGE PAPER so I can get on with my life already?!?!
13. Struggle with guilt for looking to the Bored Housewives for encouragement.
posted by White Trasherati @ 12:39 PM
4 Comments:
At 3:37 PM,
Tammy said…
Oh, the last end-of-term paper, how I always loathed it. You want to know a trick I used to use to get my papers done? I'd disregard the instructor's length requirements completely and give myself permission to write as much or as little as I felt necessary to cover my points. It helped me get started, and invariably -- given how verbose (read: long-winded) I am -- I'd meet or exceed the necessary word count.
I hear you on the holiday cheer, too. Mine waxes and wanes in direct accordance with how busy I am at any given moment.
Hang tough!
At 4:04 PM,
landismom said…
I'm in complete relief mode, myself, because a major work situation just resolved itself early. Huzzah! It means that I can spend tomorrow afternoon shopping for teacher gifts (thank you, school district, for scheduling school all the way through Friday!).
At 7:21 PM,
Cataclysm said…
Oh man, hear you about the paper! And I'm not sure what you are writing but if its anything even remotely useful to humanity, you probably feel even worse about not getting it done in an energetic and timely fashion.
And I was speaking with a friend who has a 11 & 15 year old - the quality of gifts that teachers get is off the charts!! I don't give that nice of gifts to my nearest and dearest when they get married. Oh no, she was shopping at the handmade Japanese pottery shop to get really posh gifts! Ack!
So in fact, I think that the person who said 'divorce, death and moving' are the most stressful things in life is wrong - its *really* 'paper writing, gift buying and general xmas crap'!!! You really SHOULD be more stressed than you actually sound WT!!
...and if all else fails, I find a nice tall icy glass of Guinness makes me feel better, even if it doesn't write the paper for me...
At 1:07 PM,
Tammy said…
I feel I should clarify something about my holiday preparations to alleviate some of WT's guilt: I do very, very little.
The mister does most of the grunt work. He fetches the tree and brings the boxes of ornaments up from the basement. He deals with the lights, both indoor and out. He carries the boxes to the post office for mailing. And he not only makes the ENTIRE Christmas feast, he also does all the post-holiday creative cooking with leftovers.
Me? I make cranberry sauce. From scratch! (Which takes less than 10 minutes.) I also do all our gift shopping. But I can't really call that work because I love shopping. The only other thing I'm doing is making Sam a stocking, and you would not believe how I'm going on and on about it. I understand that, in the grand scheme of things, other projects have also been challenging (I hear the Eiffel Tower was rather involved), but there's no way they were as complex and as culturally significant as this stocking.
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