Obligation Procrastination

I have too many obligations. Not only do I have too many obligations, I have too many hobbies. I recently read a quote that said something along the lines of "The good thing about procrastinating is that you're never bored, because you've always got something to do." While that may be a somewhat ironically true statement, it's not exactly helpful.

Think about it. I write, I play guitar, I play video games, I watch TV, I wander the endless reaches of the internet--and these are only the things I do in my free time. Because I also teach on SW; I'm currently watching my mom's house, dog, and horse; I have work (though I'm out until at least Monday due to a malfunction); I have bills to pay on time, et cetera.

Why do I say this? Well, what ends up happening is that I do one of the things I want to do (usually TV) until I need to go do something assigned to me (like take care of the horse) and by the time I'm done I don't have the time or the drive left to complete an obligation that I assigned to myself (like editing my book). And thus, I return to the TV, continue to be counterproductive, and then sink deeper into a pile of regret and self-loathing.

I finally got around to rereading the original chapter five from my manuscript so I could find out how to write the next part. Then I fell asleep watching TV (hm...) and woke up after dark--and then had to go clean the horse's stall in the dark cold of night, working around the horse. And that horse is at least the second largest there...

So, I was getting ready to write Chapter Five: Draft II when my mom calls. Her neighbor is very much into writing and so she decided to ask for a sample. I gave her my manuscript and pointed her to chapter twenty, because that is the one where a new character is introduced and in my mind it is one of the best chapters. I pretty much made a character appear out of nothing and went through all the thought processes within it, and she took that as me getting into the character's head too much. She said there were things she had problems with. I'm fine with that, because I know that she knows a lot more about it than I do.

However, knowing that one piece of writing that I truly worked hard on, that even a retired English professor gave a thumbs-up to, was reviewed as "needing a lot of work" hit me kind of hard. She did go back and read the beginning of the story and chapter twenty-one afterward and said that it was "excellent," and that helped, but in the end, that one chapter, the sample that I gave her, was my pride and joy.

So, I know that I shouldn't take it this hard, but it just makes you wonder if it's worth working so hard if it's just going to be written off so easily.

Maybe I should switch my focus. My first college English teacher said my writing was very mature, my second seemed to really like my essays as they always tended to be one of the first graded (and I got an A+ on the final paper...) and my mom's neighbor did agree on the mature writing thing.

Hell, what am I saying? It's not the reviews that matter; it's the creative process I love. Maybe I'll go write chapter five now.

Or maybe I'll just go watch TV again.