I've been procrastinating excessively lately because when I think about doing something, I tend to think about all the unwanted things that could happen if I do it. The worrying is exhausting, but it's also ruining my life.

Why I Procrastinate Instead of Doing Exercise:

If I exercise by myself, I won't be spending enough time with my kids, and somebody might attack me if I go out, and coyotes might attack me if I go hiking in the woods, so I need to make sure I have my protective gear first, but it takes so long to assemble it, so I'll do it later when I have more time.

If I exercise with my kids, I'll have to try to protect them too, and they'll likely whine and fuss as kids tend to do, and I'll just be too frustrated and stressed out to enjoy it, so I'll have to bring along drinks and snacks and plan out potty breaks, and I'm too tired to do all of that right now, so I'll rest up first and do it later.

If I don't study the proper way to exercise, I'll injure myself, so I have to study up first, and I'm too tired to study right now, so I'll do it later.

Why I Procrastinate Instead of Working on Kristen's Guide:

If I start working on an article or printable, I'll need to sit down and focus on it, and I'm too tired to focus, so I'll rest up first.

If I start working on an article or printable, my family will interrupt me, and I'll get frustrated, and that will put me in a grumpy mood, and I'll snap at one of my family members, and then I'll feel guilty and they'll feel hurt, so I'll just wait until I have time to really sit down and work on it.

If I start working on an article or printable, I'll be sitting instead of exercising, and I'll probably end up sitting all day and not exercising at all, so I'll get fatter, so I'll do it after I exercise. (But then I procrastinate instead of exercising.)

If I start working on my site, other things that need to get done wont' get done, like cleaning, projects around the house, gardening, stuff on my to-do list, etc. So I'll do all of that stuff first, then I'll work on my site.

Why I Procrastinate Instead of Working on Corla Kids:

I have to practice my cartooning, so I can make sure that I have up my best work.

I have to learn how to use all of the Adobe products like a pro before I start any projects on them.

I have to make sure I plan the site perfectly, so I won't have to keep changing it, so it will be perfect from the start.

Why I Procrastinate Instead of Working on My House or Yard:

It's going to be a huge, exhausting project, and I'm too tired. I need to rest first.

I'm going to clean things up, get them organized, be very proud of myself for finishing the task, and then, when I finally think I can relax, I'll turn around and discover that somebody has made a huge mess again, and I'll just feel like crying to see that I've wasted all that time doing something that was undone, and I'll get angry, and there will be an argument, and other people will feel hurt, and I'll feel guilty. I don't want to go down that road, so I'll wait until I feel more up to the task of convincing everyone to keep things clean and organized.

I need to exercise first, and I need to work on my sites first.

While I'm Procrastinating:

Let me just sit down for awhile, drink another cup of tea, read a book, watch TV, look something up on the Internet, and maybe get a bite to eat. Then I'll feel refreshed. And then I can plan out what I'm going to do and be ready to tackle the world.

But I never feel refreshed. I never do feel ready to tackle the world.

I do plan, and plan, and plan again, but when it's time to start step-one, I start to think about how my plan isn't perfect enough, so I start all over again.

My to-do list just keeps growing, and I feel more and more overwhelmed, and more and more guilty for not getting enough done, and more and more angry at myself and anyone else who dares to want anything from me. And every noise makes me cringe with over-stimulation, but if I try to get away from noise, away from demands, away from the planning, I feel guilty for being lazy.

The Result:

I dread doing what I need to do, and I feel guilty for not doing it, and I just end up angry at myself for not being productive enough.

I do fine with the kids. I get them to school and back again. I watch the kids in the neighborhood. I volunteer at the school. I organize groups. I make sure that we get to all of the play dates and parties. Kids are my #1 priority.

But I feel that I need to be doing more, being more balance, living a healthier lifestyle, earning more money, tending to my marriage more, being more productive, being more organized, and I just don't feel like I'm doing any of that. One of the things I do to earn money is help people take control of their lives, yet, I don't feel that I have control of myself right now, so I feel like a fraud, like a doctor who smokes and eats junk food, like an athletic trainer who never exercises, like a home builder who lives in a broken-down shack, like a police officer who engages in illegal activity. I know what I need to do. I know how the process works. But I just can't seem to bring myself to do any of it.

I'm just stuck between dread and guilt.

The Cure:

I keep looking for escape, for avoidance, but I don't need a vacation. I don't need more time avoiding my to-do list. I don't need more time to plan. I just need to face it all, one thing at a time, get it all done, move forward.

I need to end all this procrastination. I just need start doing something right now.

Labels: My Life

Strange things are happening to my rankings.

First my PR 5 dropped down to PR 3.

Then, my 120 links in (according to Alexa) dropped down to 37 in one day.

Meanwhile, the number of visitors to my site has gone up.

I'm so confused. Things normally slow down during the summer, but this is quite odd, too extreme. Something's fishy. Maybe there's a glitch somewhere. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I know. I know. I shouldn't judge myself, or my site, based on a third-party rating. I shouldn't even be paying attention to it. I made the site for myself, and my visitors tell me they like it. Plus I have more visitors than ever before. The ranking numbers and statistics mean nothing. And in the great scheme of life, a website isn't really the most important thing in the world.

Nevertheless, I'm sad.

Labels: Blogging and Websites

Whenever I make an update to Kristen's Guide, I post update notifications to a blog hosted by Blogger. Blogger is easy to access (even when I'm on the road) using any computer (not just my own), so I like to use it for managing my blogs. However, I also want to have my posts on the home page of my website, making my website a blog/site hybrid, giving me the best of both worlds.

So I had been using a javascript to parse the RSS feed from my Updates blog and display the feed on the home page of Kristen's Guide. Then browser security changed, blocking parsing XML across domains, making it impossible for me to use javascript to parse an RSS feed from a separate domain, so I switched to a server-side ASP script to parse the feed XML.

The server-side parsing worked beautifully, but then Google dropped my page rank from a 5 to a 3. I can only assume that it's because it saw the copied posts from my blog and figured I was just copying content, which Google will dock you for.

So today, I used my server-side scripting to parse the XML from my Blogger-hosted Updates blog, posted the data into a separate text file on my site, and used AJAX to read the text file and display it on my home page. (Crawlers don't read AJAX/javascript, so it will ignore my copied posts.)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will make my page rank jump back up to a 5.
Bigger rank = bigger advertiser income.

Labels: Blogging and Websites

My cold turned into a flu. The flu turned into a middle ear infection. My middle ear infection turned into a ruptured ear drum (ouch, ouch, ouch!) and an inner ear infection.

So now, I'm deaf in my left ear, except for an annoyingly loud case of tinnitus. I can hear perfectly fine with my right ear, but the ringing in my left ear is so loud that I can barely hear anything from my right. It's like trying to talk to someone while at a noisy concert. Even if they're screaming, you can barely hear them. It has significantly diminished my social life since I can barely carry on a conversation.

My kids also have fluid in their ears, so none of us can talk to each other without gestures, lip reading, and very loud sentences that start with "I said...!" Since we all know a bit of sign language, we've been using that to communicate.

I'm also insanely dizzy. There are lots of definitions for faith. For me, it believing that something is true, even when there is evidence to the contrary, simply because you are certain that it's true. I've discovered that I have immense faith in my eyes because I can't trust my sense of balance. I have to just keep trusting my eyes to tell me that I'm walking in a straight line, not going up or downhill, not falling, and not swaying from side to side. Every movement feels very dreamlike. Unfortunately, I can't drive, and I can barely walk anywhere. I wouldn't even dare to ride a bike. Fortunately, I've learned to tolerate the motion sickness quite well.

Hey, on the bright side, if I ever need to perform surgery while on a ship during a storm, I will have the superior balance skills to do it.

Labels: My Life