guilt: motivator on steroids

Something that really fouls my mood is to have an important task to do that I just don’t want to do.  Knowing it has to be done eats away at me until I at least start it, but leaving things partially finished is even worse.  Since returning from vacation, I’ve had lots on my mind.  There are so many (too many) things needing attention, I do want them to get done, but I don’t want to do them.  Sometimes I’m just lazy like that even though some people have accused me of being a workaholic.  Workaholic KYLady is an oxymoron, like an anorexic pig.

The most pressing task right now is to reformat my dissertation for publication in ProQuest.  I’m thrilled to be at this point, but the guidelines provided by the university were shit.  I had lots of questions right from the start and it took a whole week to get answers.  The final response was basically, “yes, our guidelines are confusing and vague. Do whatever makes sense to you”.  It’s the perfect answer, and yet, it wasn’t until late last night I could rake enough motivation together to start back to work on it.  Friday night, all day Saturday, and most of Sunday were wasted.  I am queen of procrastination.

So all weekend, it was rolling through my mind that I needed to sit down at my desk, open up my dissertation, and start making “changes that make sense”.  What did I do?  I sat at my desk and screwed around on FaceBook, played online games, read blogs, etc., etc., etc.  I played two rounds of golf, read the paper, planted some more flowers and a bush, visited Sarah (lingered longer than I should have), watched my favorite TV show (Dexter), and played my guitar.

Saturday, Someone went to the farmers’ market and brought home a large sack of beans (the ones in our garden are not ready to pick yet).  He likes beans cooked with bacon so he went to the store and bought two pounds of bacon.  He suggested I should fry up what I didn’t use in the beans for sandwiches – his sandwiches, of course.  DAMN IT; I hate frying bacon.  It pops all over me and the stove.  It’s a greasy mess and the whole affair takes forever.  Grouchy old hag that I am, I told him the beans would take an hour to string and snap, I didn’t have time for frying all that bacon – my dissertation, remember???!!!  He gave me that hurt puppy dog look, like I’d just whipped-him-with-the-newspaper-for-pooping-on-the-floor look.  He turned and walked away, saying nothing.  Then I felt guilty.

So, of course I did the beans, fried all the bacon, and then made a big vat of tuna fish salad because it’s his favorite and the guilt was just unbearable.  He was ecstatic…it really doesn’t take that much effort to keep the husband happy – I should try harder or at least care more.  After the fact, I’m left wondering if I did all this for him out of guilt, or was it just another way to procrastinate?  Perhaps it was a bit of both reasons.