Curse these meddling distractions

Why can I not just leap out of bed and get started? Eh? Eh?

I have lots to do - jobs to apply for, and article ideas to send away - ooo, tons of stuff. Yet it is hard to get motivated when working at home, especially when you are used to fulltime employment and working in a busy office environment. The change now to working for myself from home is immense - I haven't worked from home since 2002, so this year is definitely all change. So my day goes as follows:

I get up roughly when John leaves the house, so around 8.30 am. Shuffle downstairs, make porridge, have lemon tea. Read post. Laugh at bills. Turn on computer.

Now here is where the time wasting factor creeps in, as I check four email addresses for anything work orientated or interesting, and then my favourite blogs to see what they have been up to (more on these later) and read any news articles that catch my eye. Then I pop here to update and already it is 11 o’clock!

My gaze flicks at this point to the time and I start feeling a little panicked I still haven’t actually done anything of note. This puts me into ‘tidy the flat’ mode, as I cannot work until everything around me feels right (see the first ever post). Why is this – an excuse to put off doing anything? I often wonder about that. Maybe my special skill is creating plausible excuses.

So this tidying takes me to midday, as even though this is a flat, it is a rather large flat and the two of us seem to make an awful lot of mess for some reason. Also, it doesn’t help that the majority of our clothes and shoes are still wet and dripping from being viciously de-mudded yesterday.

At this point I will put on inspiring ‘let’s get going!’ type music. A swift look at my ipod playlist and it seems Pink Floyd, Grandmaster Flash and Buddy Holly are all waiting to inspire me. Hmm, Pink Floyd will either inspire me or make me want to creep into a small dark corner…

At 12.30 I will feel peckish and head over to the kitchen. We haven’t been shopping for a while, so the choice for lunch is as follows. Old bread, old fruit, one sachet of miso soup, rice, Branson pickle, cream and old potatoes. Now I am no chef, and barely a cook, so that list doesn’t make me think ‘oh – Branson Pickle Cream Pie!’ or anything like that at all. It make me think blend the old fruit to make a fruit smoothie and go to Tesco’s.

This will be now 1pm (after having to clean up from the mess the blender made) and I will be back checking emails / writing articles / polishing CV. I will also be tempted to pop on MSN and chat to my pal over in France. If I resist the MSN temptation, then I will have remembered that I have to pay some bills, and check my next driving lesson doesn’t clash with meeting up with another pal, (who just sent me a book today - ‘How to be a Social Diva’ – wonder what she is trying to tell me? Heh!)

The upshot of checking and thinking about paying will mean I have to go into town and go sort these things, as well as buy some food. So then, although it is only 14 minutes away, it will take me around two hours just to get everything done, as I also have to parcel up some pickled onion monster munch crisps to send to my good pal Suz in Cape Town. Apparently you don’t get pickled onion monster munch out there, and my friend misses them, and she has just got engaged which means she and her hubby-to-be really need pickled onion breath for a while, so I think.

I will be then back here for around 2 / 3, providing that I don’t get further distracted in town. Ah – but I still need to go to the library don’t I, and research these London magazines – ah phooey.

Okay, back here at 4pm. Then I will again check my emails, see if anything new has happened (5pm) and only then do I settle down and start working. At 5pm. This is pants. As John comes back from a days honest toil at 6.30pm and from then on I find it hard to work, not because he interrupts me, but because I like to sit with him and play chess / chat / watch Top Gear, as well as anything I can quickly flick over to on UK Gold / ITV4 / Men & Motors without him noticing.

So where am I going wrong? I need some direction!