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“After eight hours of watching helplessly while my own inane, manneristic doodles overstepped their margins and covered the pages I was supposed to be writing,
I gave up.  I decided to hate myself, to make popcorn, and read.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

 

This made me laugh, but hiding behind the humor is something very telling.
“. . .I decided to hate myself. . .”
That’s actually a good way to think about procrastination—I decided to hate myself!

Today I read this from Proverbs 10:26
Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.

Procrastination is caustic.
It doesn’t matter if it’s only me that suffers from the delay.
I’ve irritated myself.
Other words for sluggard are shirker and slacker.
So, there’s no hope of a synonym coming to my rescue.

Annie Dillard is a writer.  A very good writer, like Pulitzer Prize winning good.
She knows what she has to do to be a writer, to do the work of writing.

And she knows when she gives up, she’s deciding to hate herself.
There may be butter and salt on the popcorn, but it’s tainted by self-loathing.

It’s Friday AND I’m not giving up.
I’m not rolling things over to next week.

Thank you Annie Dillard.
I needed that.