Monday, December 22, 2008

Excuses, Excuses

By now you've probably noticed that it's been a few days since I posted my last entry to this blog. You're probably also thinking that the last thing I needed was another blog I couldn't keep up with. But, hey, procrastination is my modus operandi, and I've got other excuses reasons, if you need them.

Take the weather, for instance. Today is Portland’s fourth or possibly fifth consecutive snow day, and the accumulation is now six to eight inches deep. It’s rare that snow gets this deep in Portland, rarer still that it lasts this long.

But it’s not the snow, per se, that’s cause for concern, it’s the disruption to my daily routine that interferes with my writing and causes me so much angst. Snow piled high atop a car parked out front and tree branches sagging under the weight of accumulated ice and snow obstruct my view of yonder pond, putting a serious crimp in my wildlife-watching activities, which I then compensate for by watching stupid humans doing stupid human tricks in the snow, an activity far less interesting but vastly more entertaining—and more time consuming—than watching wildlife. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?)

The food situation is another cause of worry; I haven’t been grocery shopping in almost two weeks. No, I’m not in danger of going hungry anytime soon, but I am starting to run out of things I like to eat, which means that until the snow goes away, I’ll be preparing meals out of things I’m not particularly fond of. Meaning, of course, practically everything in my emergency food supply. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m looking forward to meals consisting of a split-pea soup appetizer, followed by an entrĂ©e of beans and a plate of ungarnished pasta for dessert. And, because I ate my last two slices of bread for lunch today, I see lots of Bisquick biscuits in my immediate future. Still, it’s marginally better than eating out of a dumpster.

Then there’s the matter of staying warm. Doubling up on my coffee and tea intake seems to help, but eventually every visit to the coffee pot necessitates a visit to that other pot—a further erosion of writing time.

My final—and perhaps favorite—excuse reason for low writing output is the fairly large number of other people’s blogs that I read on a daily basis. That I’m sometimes compelled to leave snarky comments on these other blogs also eats into the time I have available for writing for Frieddogleg and Petey’s Pipeline.

But, not to worry. As soon as I find the time, I’m going to study the situation to find out how I can better manage my time so that I have more time to write.

That’s when you should begin to worry.