Sweet sweat

I really hate starting things.

I hate getting up in the morning and will go to any lengths to delay. This has resulted in many instances of discord and even more instances of lateness causing inconvenience, stress and embarrassment. The nice ex-husband (the one I still talk to) will remember how, early in our relationship, we missed a plane because I wouldn't get up even one minute earlier than I deemed necessary. A former boss was almost driven to a nervous breakdown (being a stickler himself for punctuality)until he lit upon a novel solution to the problem of my tardiness - he made a decision, he told me years later, that I started at 9.05 - then I wasn't late!

Going to bed at night is another daily problem for me. That's why I'm called night-rider - I'm always riding the computer until the early hours of the morning. By 11pm I'm quite tired; by midnight I'm exhausted to the point of feeling ill; by 12.30am I'm trying to drag myself away from reading other people's blogs or playing a last game of Super Collapse. Then, by the time I have a shower and get to bed I'm not tired any more and end up tossing for an hour before I finally drift off around 2am.

I hate getting in the shower. I love the shower once I'm in there but it seems such an effort when I contemplate the mechanics involved that I delay.

I absolutely hate starting the house cleaning or the ironing... sometimes I've been known to quite enjoy doing it, once I get started, but I often have to trick myself into starting. I say to myself - I'll only vacuum today and wash the floors tomorrow or next week... then once I've started, I quite often clean the whole place. Another ploy I use to trick my mind is to talk on the telephone while I iron. It plays hell with the neck muscles but it makes the ironing go so much quicker. But hell... quite often I have trouble making myself start a telephone call.

I think about my family all the time. In the morning I think I'll ring J tonight. Tonight comes and I convince myself they wouldn't welcome the call, they are probably tired, busy etc... I'll ring them tomorrow... this has been known to go on for weeks. I think there is a bit of fear of rejection and fear of interfering in their busy lives in this that compounds the fear of picking up the phone (avoidance of starting a call) because funnily enough I have no problems initiating a phone call at work. Nope, even the most feared of phone calls - cold calling sales is not much of a problem for me...but you see to my mind, this is work and the hard thing about work is starting the effort to get ready to go there.

And I have the same attitude to coming home from work. Do I look forward to knock off time, down tools and flash out the door? Of course not... I dilly, dally around, make one more phone call, write one more email and never, ever leave on time.

Yep if I could learn to like starting things my life would run a whole lot smoother I reckon.