This post is somewhat off topic of my standard fare, but I wanted to put it somewhere, and this is the best place for now.
I have a 6-12 page paper due for school next Friday. A year ago this paper would barely have been on my radar at a week out. “Six to twelve pages? I can do that in my sleep!” I would have thought to myself. Not so much now. I buckled down and finished my research this past week, and I set a goal of getting the paper itself pretty much written by the end of this weekend.
But the Internet… it’s so shiny.
I sat down to start writing at 2pm and here is what the past hour has looked like:
2:00pm – Open Evernote for research notes for the paper – Evernote opens to a different notebook and I get distracted by something I wrote about nursing bras.
2:00:30 – Read some new mommy blogs to see if anyone else finds nursing bra shopping slightly terrifying.
2:05 – Open MS Word, look at Facebook “while it’s opening” (ADD much?)
2:07 – Look for friends to play Dominion with during “study breaks”. Once an hour seems reasonable, but no one is online.
2:08 – Put a header on my paper, have to refer to the course syllabus for the full course number.
2:11 – Reward myself for coming up with a title for my paper by reading a blog entry. It makes me cry.
2:13 – Need productivity music. Open Rdio. Find that I am out of free listening for the month. Open Spotify, decide that though I have never listened to Matisyahu or been interested in him, perhaps today is the day to give it a shot.
2:15 – Open Wikipedia to learn about Matisyahu. Am disappointed that there is no information about whether he has kids or not. Also, is he a vegan?
2:17 – Open assignment description to check what the citation style will be. Notice that the professor has said that the paper can have 1-1.25″ margins. Make the executive decision to start at 1″ and go to 1.25 if things start looking hairy.
2:20 – Remember that my mother in law mentioned that baby clothes need to be washed in special detergent. Consult the Internet for whether my hippie bio-degradable organic vegan liquid detergent from the Co-Op will suffice and learn that because it is scented I should probably get something else.
2:22 – Look at Amazon for “baby laundry detergent”, am sad about consumerism and the fact that I will have to go to the grocery store this weekend.
2:25 – Write three sentences. Decide that it is the appropriate time to begin making citations and remember that my text book is upstairs. Use this as an excuse to read more blogs.
2:37 – Check Facebook “one last time before buckling down”
2:45 – Decide to email potential Dominion players to see if maybe they would like to come online and play with me.
2:47 – Check AIM and note that long suffering husband (who has a cold and believes I am hard at work) is online and ask him to toss the book down the stairs to me. Because I am lazy.
2:53 – Decide that writing about procrastinating and being easily distracted may be better than fluttering around the Internet. Open WordPress.
3:09 – Am amazed that I have managed to focus on writing one single thing for the last 16 minutes. Perhaps this bodes well for returning to my paper.