This week's publication is a Public Service Announcement because change is needed, so let’s start again.
I said it in my very first article: I had to start somewhere and just figure it out. Well, after eight months and 33 posts, I finally did it. It was right in front of me this whole time: it is not about why I procrastinate (which is mostly what I have been writing about), but how I procrastinate. And that is by doing a ton of research and reading about pretty much anything piquing my interest and reflecting on it, aaaaaall I have to do is write it down instead of keeping it in my head, or table to J. A bit like a journalist you could say.
I recently rewatched How I Met Your Mother and something clicked, as I was following Robin’s journalistic ambitions I started to reconsider my own. In the episode ‘False Positive’, she has to choose between two job opportunities: a journalistic research job at World Wide News or the role of currency rotation specialist, aka “coin flip bimbo”, for a game show. As the episode goes on, she keeps referring to one or the other depending on her feelings towards it. When the journalist job is “too hard and boring”, she is the currency rotation specialist, when it is her goal and take the job, it turns back to coin flip bimbo.
The first option is the obvious choice to further her career and reach the goal she set for herself at the beginning of the year (to have an employee badge at WWN); the latter is the easy option to avoid hard work. The choice is clear and easy, scary, but easy. So why am I perpetually choosing the coin-flipping bimbo job for myself?
Like Robin, every time I call the easy way “currency rotation specialist” I make it sound like it is what I want, therefore avoiding the hard work. Unlike Robin, I picked the easy way.1 I contented myself with some easy ‘journaling’ instead of using my time wisely and doing some actual work. I deleted my half-assed drafts and made a list of essays I wanted to write, putting real work into it because I want my badge too.
Just watch the episode, I am famously bad at telling stories. Yes, see the irony there.