I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately. My current WIP hasn’t been a ton of fun. It’s been hard, boring work. It makes me want to cry, and that never makes me want to work on it. So I delay (you know, by writing posts or doing *cough, cough* research), but then I’m stuck working on this project longer than I need to.
It reminded me of brussels sprouts when I was a kid.
I hated brussels sprouts.
And I don’t mean I didn’t like them, I actually found them detestable on a molecular scale. That’s right I hated the molecules of the brussels sprouts. So whenever I put them into my mouth, I would sort of move them from one side to the other trying to psych myself up to actually swallow that nasty veggie. Inevitably, the pushing of vegetable from one side to the other never makes it taste any better. Each part of my tongue was equally abhorred by the mere presence of the boiled, soggy vegetable, and no amount of trans location was going to improve it.
After a full tour of my taste buds, I would finally just swallow it and try not to think of it swimming around in my stomach next to the mashed potatoes.
But when it came to desert, did I give it the same tour of my taste buds? Did I take the time to savor it? No, of course not. I was a kid, and I ate my ice cream as fast as I could manage, barely tasting it.
So what led me to taste every scrap of the despised brussel sprout but swallow the ice cream whole?
Right now my WIP is the brussel sprouts, and my next WIP is my ice cream.
I’ve officially given my WIP a full tour of my taste buds and it’s time to just get it out of the way.
Do you wallow in the things you need to do before you can get on to the ice cream?
The fact that you even DO the things you need to do before the things you want to do means you're ahead of me. I am a world-class procrastinator in addition to having no sense of personal discipline. So, I end up skipping the things I need to do and heading right to that ice cream. Then I feel huge amounts of guilt. That's my world.
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