Running With the white Rabbit

"I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date."  You remember that eternally-stressed bunny from Alice in Wonderland. We're not exact matches--I'm generally very punctual. I suppose my version should be, "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important deadline."

I've tried and tried, pretty much my whole life, to overcome this peccadillo. Isn't that a great word? I love the way it sounds. It's also not the right word, because it means something very small.  I'd like to think of this problem as being very small, but that's just avoiding the truth.

In real life, I'm motivated to clean the house if company is coming. You can't begin to imagine what this place looks like after ten months of no visitors whatsoever.

In my writing life, it means that if I'm stuck for an idea, I'll discover that the bathroom has to be scoured, the garage cleaned out and the roof re-shingled (by me) immediately to ward off imminent disaster.

The same thing happens if I decide to catch up on the filing, or tackle the mending that's been sitting by the swing machine forever, or write an overdue note. There are always dozens of other tasks that I'm sure need to be done NOW.

I know it's a waste of time, and I would have been too embarrassed to admit it to you back when I thought I was the only one suffering from this ... whatever the opposite of peccadillo is.

Then I ran across a quote from Robert Benchley, a humorist from the early 20th century. "Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." Hallelujah! Turns out I'm not alone. Or demented. I'm just part of the human race.

What a relief.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, maybe I should figure out how to overcome my procrastination.

Maybe I'll start with a chat with that rabbit.