On Forced Writing

I’ve been averaging a post and a half or so a week for over a month now. Less than my original goal at the beginning of the blog rebirth process, but I haven’t totally forgotten the blog and disappeared for another year, either.





Thinking about my progress got me thinking about deadlines and forced writing. I’ve been with the V family all weekend, helping them pack up and move, by entertaining their children. Mrs. V specifically planned to take the kids with them house-hunting this afternoon, so that I could do homework by myself for a few hours. What did I do? Proofread a novel a friend is getting published, ate popcorn, and chilled. I did not write the paper for psych that I needed to write.

It is very hard for me to just decide, ok, at 2pm I am going to sit down and do work. I need to actually be in the mood for working on whatever needs to get done. Unfortunately, deadlines wait for no man. No ADD girls, either. I do try to capitalize on the times when I am in the mood to write, but those often happen when I can’t actually do it, like yesterday at the children’s museum, when I had two children and no notebook or pen.

Sometimes I worry that it is not the ADD, but just a lack of self-discipline. That really, not being able to just buckle down and do things is my own damned fault, and I shouldn’t blame a disorder for my screwups. Of course, I know that self-doubt and worry are two symptoms of ADD, but then I worry that maybe I’m excusing the behavior by attributing it to a disorder I can’t change. And around and around it goes.

The bottom line is, I get stuff done. Even if I have to pull all-nighters, I do have everything done when it needs to be done. My goal is that some day, I will be able to have a slightly more relaxed approach, and finish things :gasp: early, on occasion, but for now, done suffices.

Correspondence

I suck at writing letters. Email, cards, actual written letters to mail, you name it, I’m awful at them. Especially thank you letters.

I completed a huge non-profit project with people in April, and have still not sent out thank you e-mails. I really need to get on that.

I have a pile of thank you cards from my graduation party in mid-may that are half done. I didn’t have addresses for them, and even though I now have the addresses, they still have not gotten done.

Do any of you have tips, suggestions for keeping up with things like this?