Procrastination

I am such a procrastinator!

Do you know what makes me procrastinate? Fear. Yup. Everytime there's something I don't want to do, fear is generally behind it.

Today, for instance, I didn't want to clean, so I made myself a chai. Chai takes 30 minutes, so I gave myself 30 minutes to clean. Vacuumed the floor and scooba'd it. BTW, Dan found a Scooba theme song for us: http://www.woot.com/Files/20060918-TFOT3P.mp3.

I felt better.

I didn't want to draw up the plan for the backyard remodel, so I ran the laundry.

I felt better.

I finally collected everything I needed to draw up the planting diagram, but needed to take a bunch of measurements. After that was done, I started drawing it out. Pencils, giant eraser, graph paper, compass, ruler: the Works! It took all afternoon. It went into the evening.

I'm almost done with it, but I feel better.

Then I didn't want to make Caitlin's lunch, so instead I wrote in my gardening journal. I outlined all of the massive amount of work I need to get done before a hard freeze comes. Now I have a plan that I will start work on tomorrow.

I felt better.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to do (Move all backyard plants to front yard [including a TREE], rework sprinkler system, dig 18,000 holes in front yard, order soil amendments, till them into backyard, plant new plants, create a sandbed frame, order sand, move sand into bed, etc., etc., etc.) and I wind up doing nothing but reading: blogs, books, cereal boxes - it doesn't matter!

All of this, though, is a cover for what I'm really avoiding. Editing the wedding pictures. This happens every time. I shoot the wedding. I think That wasn't so bad. Then I spend the next several days tearing myself apart mentally over what I should have done. Just like all my law school pals, without ever seeing the fruit of my labor, I'm convinced it's going to be horrible because I forgot this thing, didn't do that thing, forgot this other rule of thumb, etc. I'm terrified to look at the pictures because I know they didn't all turn out. I'm prepared to hate them all. Misty will never forgive me. So instead of editing photos, I'm putting up the Lunch Box pictures and blogging.

The crazy thing is that once I get into the editing groove, everything works out just fine. No one needs 377 perfect photos of their wedding day. (No, really!) A number that large is too overwhelming. How do you choose? Once I start, the panic will slide away and I'll like around half of the photos and I'll tweak them until I'm happy with them. No one but me will ever see the shots that should have been great, but my hand shook and now they're blurry.

BTW, you have no idea how frustrating that is to me. I'm not an adrenaline junky - I hate getting the shakes, but the wedding photography? Terrifying. You have one chance to get the shot. The kiss, the ring exchanges, the toast, etc. Some folks might be willing to do those as poses (you'd definitely get a better shot that way) after the ceremony is over, but I'm trying to capture The Moment. And The Moment only comes around once. After that, you're just faking it.

Anyway, I'm done procrastinating. It's time to go face the music.

I'm sure I'll feel better.

When I'm done with these photos, I'll go back and edit the Italy 10th anniversary pictures and post them here. That's another thing I was procrastinating on.

What makes you procrastinate?