BLOCKED

I literally turned in my Master's thesis 2 days and 2 hours before I was going to start loosing credit hours and retaking classes in order to graduate. With six years to write the damn thing, it took me all but 50 hours of the time allotted to complete it. What was crazy stupid is that I remember entire days/weeks/months staring at the computer. (And, if the Internet had existed as it is today when I was in school, I would have no degrees because talk about a way to kill time.)  I wasn't writing. I soon hated my topic. It was neither earth-shattering, interesting, nor important. Life became a series of punishments. Since I wasn't writing, I wouldn't allow myself to do anything fun, either. I hated writing, and I hated life not writing because the lack of writing HAUNTED me.

Most people can be broken down into either needing carrots or sticks to get motivated. Carrot guys can work towards a goal. Dangle a reward out there and they'll work like crazy for it. Punish, and you get no results. Stick people need a kick in the ass every now and then to get things done.

What's really killing me these days is I am trapped back in the days of staring at my computer and not allowing myself any "fun." I am woefully behind on a client project that entails a ton of writing and organizing what feels like an overwhelming amount of information. Bored to death with the project and vowing never to compile data for a website, again, I find that I will only allow myself to either:

• do nothing
• surf the net because, hey, I am on the computer
• avoidance behaviors like this blog
• any other small project I can knock out
• or housework. 

My art room is beckoning to me but I dare not walk upstairs because I am being punished for not getting my work done. I carry a notebook of information and my laptop around like a freaking albatross around my neck.

Apparently the "carrot" of getting paid isn't motivating enough. The "stick" of disappointing my client even further is going to come crashing down on me soon. Maybe writing this out will help. That, or I could go check Facebook again to see what's happened in the 15 minutes since I last peeked at it.