As I’ve mentioned before, I have something of a problem with procrastination, most especially when it comes to my college work. Right now, I’m in the midst of a gut-wrenching mania known as dissertation writing, except that I’m not writing anything. Hence the mania. It’s super stressful, but at least 98 % of the stress is caused by wondering how your stupidity has reached even further dizzying heights, when you thought you really had its number way back. Anyway, I digress. While mulling all this over today I was thinking about how, while I’m really a fundamentally lazy creature at heart (curse you, inherent sloth), I hate sitting still doing nothing. Even if I’m watching tv, etc, I need to be doing something with my hands. I am what you call a born fidgeter, and I come from a long line of them. And since discovering that knitting is the perfect way to keep my hands busy while I’m (not really) doing other things, I manage to be sneakily productive while ostensibly doing nothing. And now all I can think of is how much I wish this could somehow translate into also getting my college work done without my really realising. Because that is the dream.
Today, seeing as I (shockingly!) actually did a semi-reasonable amount of work (ask me anything you want to know about gender and comedy) I naturally rewarded myself by, um, doing nothing for the rest of the day.
And the fruits of my sloth? Well they come in several courses, my friends.
First a little spinning, to whet the appetite:
A colourway I like to call “Exploding Sweetshop”
I’ll be honest, I don’t really like this. Loved the roving, but somehow when I spun it up the colours turned into a sickly sweet pastel-y mess. Blech. This is only half of it, the other half awaits me.
Then I blocked the Lace Ribbon Scarf:
Why won’t you dry faster?
And, gripped by a sudden fever at the realisation that I now only had one or two serious (i.e. not already forsaken and banished to the UFO pile) projects on my needles, I hurriedly cast on for Ene. Ene! Oh how long I’ve waited to knit you. Soon, you shall be mine!
You don’t look like much yet, but we know your potential
Oh and to conclude, I am currently obsessed with the colour of this yarn that I recently ordered. Colinette Jitterbug in Elephant’s Daydream, for the curious.
I’m so pretty that elephants daydream about me.
‘Twill become socks, but which socks? Eh? Eh? I ask you.
.
That’s almost exactly how I feel! Laziness, needing to keep busy, all of it. Oh, if my uni work could just do itself.
Your work, as always, is beautiful.
Amazing how we both indulge and punish ourselves unreasonably.
I, too, am a doctoral student (not yet candidate) thought not an artist of the needles as are you. But I understand all the inclinations: the tendency to put off the writing (what heavy baggage we tote in that activity), the need to feel busy/productive while also somehow avoiding the difficult (we place so much of our value on our productivity, sadly), and the desire to indulge ourselves that is mixed with guilt for doing “nothing”. But isn’t that why we work so hard? So we can relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor a bit before we plunge into hard work yet again?
I’ve written a book about this – it’s called “Productive Procrastination – Make it Work For You, Not Against You” It’s available at amazon.com
Happy spinning (whether that spinning is yarn or words),
Kerul
i’m pretty much the same way. i procrastinate on the things i should be doing, but can’t stand being idle. i think knitting fits in just perfectly. i may not have done the laundry, or caught up on paperwork, but i did watch 2 movies and knit a quarter of a sweater.