procrastination (day 3 of 100)

I have a confession to make—okay, it's probably not much of a confession, since lots of bloggers seem to start out with a similar idea; that is, lots of writers struggle with a similar problem.

Here's the confession: I have made a terrible habit of procrastinating. One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get into the habit of putting words on the page every day. My history with procrastination is long and storied. It is the stuff of legend, truly. (Maybe someday I'll tell you the whole sad tale.)

Somehow I've managed to make it halfway through a Ph.D. program in a humanities field, and this is where I find myself: My dissertation proposal is behind by about a year. I have a paper from last year that I have to make up for. And I'm behind on two response papers—no, make that three—for the seminar I'm currently taking. And that's just the stuff I'm behind on! I also have to write a term paper for the seminar, one which will hopefully overlap (research-wise) with my dissertation proposal literature review section, and will hopefully lead into a future dissertation chapter. And finally, I have to assemble an in-depth annotated bibliography for an independent study I'm taking with a different professor.

I have about a month to finish all of these things, and the panic is beginning to set in on a low level. Which, in a way, is progress—in prior semesters, it usually took until the last week of the semester for me to begin to feel the panic, and it took until the passing of the due date for me to begin to write. Whoops.

For now, I'm taking comfort in the fact that this brief post has been a moment of zen. I did feel a sense that the words were coming naturally and my mind was in a flow state. This is a nice change from the frantic, fragmented feeling I normally have when I'm writing. I hope that, by keeping up the habit of writing a little at a time, this good feeling will be easier to come by.

If you're here, thank you for reading.