It's Like Cleaning out the Fridge

I am not a good procrastinator.  Getting things done on time is important to me, sometimes to a fault (like “demonstrating exasperation” when we are running late to church). As I mentioned on a recent blog post about being a disciplined person (not perfectly, of course), in grad school I would start my projects and papers far ahead of the deadline, because I despised the anxiety and stress--and the less effective prose--when under the gun, so to speak.

There are things I do procrastinate over: cleaning the fridge (don’t look--just reach in and grab something), vacuuming stairs (my friend Anne recently sprained her ankle falling down the stairs while vacuuming--I told her that means we are to never vacuum stairs, obviously), weeding (we should not mess with God’s creation) and...finishing the several books I have started writing.

My sister Ann used to bug me about getting my books written. She hasn’t mentioned my doing that in a while, so she apparently now knows that bugging a writer to write, much like spewing exasperation at certain people who make you late for church, is not effective.

What may be more effective is my noticing the clock ticking towards my next birthday: 49. While 49 is just about half the age of my friend Ward (he just turned 90) and that makes me feel like the new 30, I recently realized that I have been planning on writing a book for more than 25 years,  and I felt old and unaccomplished.

I have three books in my head right now: one that I have been musing over for four years is “Austenesque,” but it is somewhat dark in nature; another is non-fiction about my favorite artist from the 1890's who became a Christian--I have been researching it off and on, but really need to go to France and England (anyone want to be my patron?); and the third is actually not just in my head, but on paper in the form of several chapters. I recently developed the content further and spoke at a one-day retreat on its topic: how God’s love transforms.

This last one is the first one I will publish--makes sense, since it is the only one I have substantially worked on--once I actually stop procrastinating and finish it and find a publisher.

In the meantime, I really should clean out my fridge.