procrastinators get it done.... eventually

So this morning, a few cups of coffee down, yesterday's paper finished (great article about M. Ward in the Times) and a Rock Hudson/ Doris Day movie I had never seen, I now contemplate having a day off and time stretching ruthlessly before me. This inevitably happens on my days off; it is about noon before I get to my actual list which involves a whole load of things I don't want to do.

What inevitably happens is nothing productive or good. I may get my laundry folded, I may work on my lesson plans for the next day, and I may work out. But when one is given the gift of free time, how is it supposed to be spent? I get this feeling that I am supposed to be the Martha Stewart of productivity. I am supposed to make all my meals for the week and expertly freeze them, clean the house top to bottom, lesson plan the rest of the semester, catch up on all my bedside reading, find the answer to world peace, and still have time to host a dinner party for 12.

Instead, this morning I am downloading a bunch of free music picks from Starbucks, playing some online scrabble, and generally waiting for that burst of inspired energy to smack me upside the head.

Teaching is a profession riddled with guilty feelings. I do have some teacher friends who are so very good about maintaining their diligent work ethic. My friend Amy always plans a reward for her work. "If I grade 20 papers, I can go swimming." I practice the reverse; "If I go swimming, I can always grade those last 20 papers when I get back". I call this the Scarlett O'Hara philosophy of life. Tomorrah is (after all) anothah day... (eyes batting hopefully). Why put off today what you can eventually put off tomorrow?

I blame my father mostly for this philosophy. When he was a teacher, he would save all the papers collected during the quarter and then grade them all about two days before grades were due. He would sit at the TV, watching old episodes of Nova and grading each paper with unintelligible comments and symbols that only he could understand.

And even now, as I look at the clock, I see that it is 12:30 and oh, how the guilt bubbles to the surface of my consciousness. I have to do two things; a) have grace for the part of me that wants to surf YouTube all day and b) be really disciplined about limiting the things that suck the most time out of my life.

It all seems to be about motivation. I don't know if I can train myself to be more motivated about the things I don't want to do. Motivation isn't something you can make grow, it has to develop on its own. But maybe I can plant more seeds of motivation in my garden.