Procrastinatory Paring and Sharing

So, today, in my usual procrastinatory (is that even a word) I decided to go through each of  the links on my blog roll in an attempt to clarify two things.  First, I wanted to see if the bloggers were even still active.  I mean, no good sending you to someone really cool who hasn’t written anything really cool since last year…or the year before.  I hate that when that happens!  I find a blogger I love reading then realize I’m reading something that happened years ago and this person, for all digital intents and purposes, no longer exists. I usually figure this out after I’ve posted a comment only to realize that the last person that commented commented over a year earlier.  Yeah, doltish, really.  I’d like to spare the handful of readers who do troll silently through my musings here the angst of that experience. 

The other thing I’m trying to do is pare down the blog roll.  When I first started this blog (has it been a year and a half already?), I put people on that were interesting to me then.  I had goals, kinda sorta, in mind for what I wanted this place to be and those people made my blogroll because they seemed to fit the criteria for the kind of resource I wanted to provide my readers.  Yeah, well…things change over time.  Bloggers change, their blogs change, goals change, life changes, we change and I have definitely changed over the last year and a half…I think. Yeah, I have.  I’m still sorting a lot of stuff out and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and where I want to be doing it, with whom I want to be doing it, why I want to be doing it are still all up for grabs (well, mostly) but some things have been sorted.  The upshot of the sorting is that I’ve decided that I only want certain folks on my blog roll.  I have reasons for this.

No! No!  It isn’t because I have these elitest, exclusivist or exclusionary tendencies (like some of those really big name blog-for-a-living types that I’m really jealous of because I haven’t made their blogroll yet let alone produced a blog like theirs, but okay!).  It is because I think  it simply reveals WAY TOO MUCH of my ADD tendencies when I have stuff from all over the universe listed that has nothing to do with anything I’m doing here.  Not that I’m doing anything here that is even remotely relevant to the real meaning of life, but it’s sorta fun for me…most of the time.   Even so, I think it is time for this little bloggy to grow up a bit and look a little more…um….what’s the word I’m looking for…respectable?  Ordered?  Thought out?  Put together?  I don’t know…something like that. 

I have a really easy way of determining if I want someone to stay on my blog roll.  If I know them in real life and they are a family member or close friend, they’re automatically in.  Well, unless they request not to be.  That’d tell me something now wouldn’t it?  If  they are just someone out there in the blogosphere then they have to meet two criteria:

• they have to be posting regularly and recently.
• I have to get the “I want to be like that when I grow up!” reaction when I read them.

Oh, wait, there’s a third…

• they have to be on a topic that I perceive my readers (whoever they are because they don’t often identify themselves but I know they are there because my stats say so unless the stats lie!)  would be interested in.  I’m still trying to sort all that out.

Anyway, there you have it.  The reason why some of you might find your names missing on the blog roll and why others will find they’ve been added.  Mostly those who have been deleted so far are folks who aren’t writing anyway and probably don’t care.  If I deleted you and you do care, post a comment.  Everything’s fixable, well, mostly everything.  If you wander in and like what you read, let me know.  If you have a blog and you’d like to be added let me know that too.  I’d be glad to visit your place and take a look around.

Off I go to peruse postings and look at links while avoiding adult responsibilities like laundry, dishes and dealing with other diverse forms of dirt.  I’ve come across a few great bloggers who still rate and need a shout out.  Well, they don’t need it, they are mostly doing fine without my recognition.  I need it, because what they said, how they said it, what they experienced, resonated with me in a way that I feel is worth voicing.  Look for me to share these folks with you in the days to come.  I hope you’ll visit them and find them interesting too!

The Blogroll Game

I’m procrastinating again. 

I can tell.  I follow a particular pattern in my procrastination.

First, I get out the work I need to do. Today, I must prep math lessons in powerpoint and develop a promotional flyer for the school’s afterschool math club in April.

I then leave the laptop and the curriculum and the file for the afterschool math club on the table and go pour a glass of wine.  Then I get online to check my email and Facebook account activity.  I change my status message at Facebook, read the one email I have on Facebook, delete all the messages I received in my yahoo inbox from Freecycle.org and then I go read what all my bloggy friends have written since Friday. 

I get distracted responding to their posts.

I then play The Blogroll Game.  This is the game I created for myself to keep myself from being completely productive and to keep myself from using technology efficiently.  I go to a bloggy friend’s blog read all their stuff.  Maybe I’ll leave a comment, but then I check out their blogroll. 

This gets me in big trouble every time.  I lose hours of productivity and fall further behind in life as the result.  It’s a great game!

Today I was over at Zeus’ blog, “On Becoming A Universal and Narcissistic God” and after reading his most recent post, which admittedly was way over my little head,  I checked out his blogroll.  Personally, I love checking out his blogroll (hee!hee!) any chance I can get, but it usually discourages me because he has some great bloggers listed there.  Oh well, when I grow up I want to be like them. 

Anyway…today…by chance I clicked on the blog Zeus had listed as Dad’s House.  (I was actually heading toward CMajor7’s blog, because reading him also makes me happy or at least want to move away from here, but got distracted.) If you are a single parent or even a single post-marriage individual in your late thirties or forties, you need to check this blog out. His blogroll is amazing and will connect you to others who are dealing with the same parenting/dating quandaries we all seem to experience at this stage of the game.  David Mott’s posts are entertaining, well written and have just enough substance to them that you can do something with it and not be completely overwhelmed (unlike my own posts.  Oh well, I want to be like David Mott when I grow up too, so there).

Join me in The Blogroll Game and procrastinate away!

Okay, now that I’ve frittered 90 good minutes away in cyberworld, I think I can finally get to work…hah!  Maybe.

What Do You Do When You Procrastinate?

Top 10 Things I Do When I Procrastinate:

1. Something, anything else.
2. Blog.
3. Check email.
4. Clean house.
5. Read a book.
6. Nothing.
7. Putter in the yard.
8. Re-arrange the living room.
9. Go browsing.  I can’t shop, I have no money!
10. Write about procrastinating.

So what am I avoiding tonight?

1. The Dinner Hour chaos
2. Grading papers
3. Working out…but I’m going to do it really I am!
4. Laundry
5. The paper pile on my desk
6. Making the kids clean their rooms (that’s always a fun experience)
7.  Cleaning my bedroom (why does it have to be the depository for every unwanted or undetermined possession we have?  Isn’t that what the garage is for?)
8. Grocery shopping
9. Cleaning
10. Following up on kids who are procrastinating on chores, homework and room cleaning.
11. Maybe a little bit of life (I’m kind of in a little bit of a funk, I guess.  Not sure why.  I’m not really unhappy about anything, though.  I mean, I ended last month with a $6.28 balance in my checking account which is pretty awesome considering it took me a year to catch up from making payments on two homes  (this one and the travel trailer I evacuated to before the ceasefire was ordered).  It’s also a good thing since last month was Christmas and well since I’m on a cash only basis that made everything much tighter.  To some that might be deplorable, but to me, it just means I’m not starting the year out behind or further in debt and that’s a very good thing for me.  So, I don’t get the funk, or the procrastination other than to say that it might be a bit of a minor collapse after the tense week I had last week.

Okay, so enough about me.  You know you procrastinate too.  What do you do when you procrastinate? And what are you avoiding right now?

Procrastinator’s Demise

How can it possibly be more difficult to sit down and write something now that I have eons of time at my disposal without the multudinous interuptions of children and the requirements of having to show up to work?

I don’t get it.

It’s nearly two in the afternoon.  I slept in this morning and needed the rest.  Here it is and after screwing my morning away with cleaning out my inbox, making breakfast, having coffee, talking on the phone to one person and wasting hours of time on interactive web sites trying to pick out paint colors using models of kitchens that look nothing like mine (nor do they look anything like most homes I’ve ever been in that would even be painted by a do-it-yourselfer) I find that my day is almost over and I’ve accomplished zilch.  Okay, wait.  I just put in one load of laundry. 

This is bad!  This is not me!  I’m usually a powerhouse of steady, effective task completion.

Sigh.  It’s because I have to clean the house and I hate cleaning the house.  Okay, lie.  I don’t hate cleaning the house, I hate getting started on it.  I love the results of a clean home and once I get started the momentum of seeing things sparkle really motivates me, but right now…I’m putting getting started off.

Like getting started on that novel swimming around in my mind.  Like getting started on changing out those light fixtures or fixing the leak in the hot tub (because it’s going to be freaking cold out there!) like avoiding Christmas shopping because every stop signal I waste ten minutes at is another gift for one of the children.  Like going back to church.  Like figuring out the next steps in my career.  Like finishing those books sitting on my bedside table.  Ewww!  Like cleaning off the mountainous paperwork on my desk.  Like figuring out what’s wrong with the electric fireplace in my bedroom. 

I think I’m going through a phase of procrastinating at life.  The demise of the procrastinator is that it eventually all catches up with you.  It will catch up with me if I don’t get going.  It will catch up to me about the time the kids walk in the door and I realize I’m not at all “ready” because I haven’t done all the things I could have done to ensure that I’m relaxed and not working like a dog when they come back.  It will catch up to me then if it doesn’t catch up before.  Then there will be stress and I will regret the waste of time.

Alright.  I’m not sure I’m any more motivated than I was, but I sure don’t want to put things off any longer.  Besides, I want to sit in my hot tub this week, when the tub is full and the water is warm.  It’s not so much fun with two inches of freezing cold water in there.