2054 Procrastination Tip
Procrastination isn't my biggest problem, but I've been known to find the Christmas tablecloth in the clothes basket in July. Right now I'm kicking a grocery sack I filled when I cleaned my office in November. These are NOT trash items, but just things removed from the surface so that the room looked nice for Thanksgiving. Now I'm sort of wondering what's in it since I haven't missed anything.The other day, reading a right brained blog (artistic), I came across the book Organizing from the Right Side of the Brain by Lee Silber. Since we had just reorganized our art studio, laundry room, storage room and furnace room, I thought I'd take a peek and see if we'd done anything right. Our local library couldn't find its copy, and couldn't find a location to loan it (that's a whole other story to be shared only with fellow librarians). But my friend Adrienne (also a librarian) found a copy in the Worthington Public Library, and today her nice husband handed it to me at the coffee shop. I have only looked at the title page and table of contents (no index), but I did see one little after thought on the last page of text that I thought was excellent if you're having trouble getting started (procrastinating as we call it) on a task:
"I put my favorite song on the stereo and make the goal of organizing the length of the song. Of course, once I start I continue because starting can be the hardest part--especially when something feels overwhelming." Jill Baldwin Badonsky, Creativity Coach.
I have a tape player and a Cynthia Clawson tape in the laundry room. This might work with the ironing.
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2 comments:
This comment has nothing to do with the post (or maybe everything), but I thought of you last week. Before I retired in 1997 I regularly taught a graduate course for School teachers on how to use theatre techniques to teach reading creativity etc. Each student had to read, review, criticize a book on the subject. I routinely checked out about twenty such books, then checked them out to students. At the conclusion of the class, I collected the books and returned them to the library. I taught my last class of that type in 1992, but after returning the books via the outside mail drop, the library notified me that I had 12 books that were not returned and that I should renew or return them. I knew that I had returned them, so I went to the library, took one of the work/study slaves with me and went through the stacks (almost all day). I found ten of the twelve, talked to the librarian, pointed out that the last two were somewhere in the library, but I coudn't find them. Since that time, every year I have received a nastygram from the library and every year have sent them one back, telling them to search their own stacks, the books were there.
The day before Christmas, my water heater imploded pouring water all over my family room. Serve pro came and removed the carpet (not yet replaced) and we emptied the closet which housed the water heater. In that closet was a picnic backpac with plastic plates in the outer pocket. I hadn't seen it in years, and had forgotten its existance. I looked inside the pack and there were the missing two books. If I were a totally moral man, I would have carried them to the circulation desk, groveled before the librarian, and returned the books. Instead I took them to the drive/thru return and dropped them in, hoping against hope that I will not receive another nastygram this year. If I do, will I go in an repent publicly? Probably not, I will blame the whole thing on age. As a retired librarian, I beg for your support. (My son is a librarian at a Mississippi University, and I won't say what his comment was when my wife told him this tale.)
It's a terrific story, well told, and one I've heard many versions of (this being the best). I've had books mailed back after 30 years from former students; mailed back by secretaries when the professor dies; returned with tooth marks (dogs really do eat books); and pulled freezing cold books out of the stacks when the student stands before me an swears he returned it last week.
You're a good man--not only can you 'fess up, but you've got a librarian in the family.
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