Eluding the procrastinet

Oh the wonders of enforced unpluggedness (there are four syllables in that). In the library at TAFE today the internet was down for some time. Right from the moment I arrived, in fact, with all my plans for the next hour or two centring around:

1.       Check email.

So there I was, stymied before I even got the wheels off the ground. Procrastination nipped in the bud, cut off at the knees. Pre-emptively struck against.

Normally I use the more useless distractions of the internet to entice myself into doing work. The prospect of a hilarious email about cats who wear sunhats, or the upcoming federal election (always good for a laugh), at least gets me seated at the computer, and then I have a vague hope that I might accidentally type out an assignment while I’m there.

No internet? I stared at my computer screen and thought dully, ‘But what do I do?’

Reluctantly I concluded that I was going to have to do some work. Writing, to be precise, because the only homework I ever have that doesn’t rely on documents in my email or dropbox is Write Some of Your Novel.

And oh dear it was productive. Without facebook to check every time I finished a paragraph, or got stuck over an adjective, I simply kept going. I almost got in this ‘zone’ I keep hearing about.

But then, alas, the IT department waved their wand and the dub-dub-dub opened its vistas once again. Without a backward glance at my novel I fired up the hotmail, read the paper and then moseyed on to blogger…

But I did make a mental note to cut the cord more often while I'm working.