Friday, May 05, 2006

Some denial, some renewed energy, some sunshine

As mentioned, I have been in one of my periodic slumps of procrastination, at a time when I have a whole boatload of things to do. The to-do list will ease up a bit after this weekend. But I've been driving myself crazy, with the avoidance. How can one person be so productive and goal-oriented sometimes, and so apallingly distractable at other times?

It's like when I was 9 years old and I had to write a report for school on cornhusk dolls, and no matter how many library books my mom found on cornhusk dolls, no matter how much she talked up the fascinating history of cornhusk dolls, no matter how many actual cornhusk dolls she bought me as inspiration, I stubbornly refused to work on that damn report. Until the last possible minute, by which time I was panic-stricken and annoyed with the all the things I no longer had time to do to make it great.

But, today I went with my business partner, Zena, to interview for a possible new consulting gig. Zena and I have been working a bit on formalizing our business, but we haven't done any actual project work together for about five months now. We've both been occupied with loner projects.

After our interview, we went to a coffee shop to catch up. I talked about The Thesis and how it's tormenting me, and we talked about how we would work together on this new job if we get it. And boy, it just filled me with energy. She had good feedback on The Thesis, and fluffed me up with praise about how great it sounded so far! And how she just knew I'd do a fabulous job, and they were so lucky to have me doing it! And by the way, here are three suggestions of things that would make it even better!

I've missed working with Zena, the other half of my professional brain, who is as unstinting with her praise as she is in her willingness to point out when I'm full of crap. I think it just may have given me the inspiration I need to finish things up over the next week or two. Either that, or I'm just on a big sunshine high from the fabulous weather.

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