SquarePeg Books

Ah….another year.

Have you ever noticed that it’s when you’re not supposed to be active, when you’re supposed to lay down and take it easy because you need to heal or some such, that’s when your brain starts to berate you for being lazy and not accomplishing things and all those chores are piling up and that To-Be-Read list is out of control and don’t even get me started on the craft room.

Not when you’re just fine and dandy does your brain do this. No, no. Laying around like a lazy bum while you wait for laundry to cycle and repeatedly bingeing the same three YouTube channels doesn’t trip your brain into saying “Hey, since we know how ALL the episodes of The World’s Most Sociopathic Psychos ends, may be we could, I don’t know, edit a manuscript or knock a quick craft off the to-do list or something.”

No. It’s apparently when you’re doing the exact same thing, but now recovering from flu, or foot surgery, or that “special dish” grandma made just for you that smelled a little off… That’s when your brain thinks you’re supposed to mutli-task like a fiend and get twelve-million things done in one afternoon.

Which, of course, you can’t do. Because you’re laid out and just getting the laundry flipped before it sours is a real accomplishment.

Why is that? Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we know huge progress could be made by taking teensy-weensy steps every day, but still refuse to do it? Am I the only one with an instant gratification problem?

Is it the same part of the brain that self-sabotages in other ways? The Perfectionist path, the Procrastination path, The Sense of OverWhelm, The Distraction, The Fool, The Tower, The Resistance to Finishing a Project (does any one else have that one? That’s a big one for me)…

Perhaps “Focus” is a good word to guide me this year. We’ll see.