"No, I'm not procrastinating I'm between tasks right now" - TY
I once attended a screen writing workshop where the most valuable thing I learnt was the importance of procrastination during the writing process. The explanation is that while you’re procrastinating you’re actually going over everything in your mind. Michael Arndt wrote the screen play of Little Miss Sunshine in three days, but before that the characters and plot were swimming around in his head for three years. What great news for me! I’m a procrastinator from way back. My dad used to tell me that I was a procrastinator before I even knew what the word meant.
And I have another bad habit that fuels it even more. It’s called hair snapping. It’s involves snapping the ends off my hair. I could sit for hours, running my hands through the under layers of my hair, finding frayed and broken strands of hair. It must sound a little vein but it’s an interesting process. I imagine it’s similar to a nail-biter (although I’m not a nail biter, so I can’t speak for this group).
I have fine hair which seems to be prone to breakage. When a strand of hair is almost at the point of breaking I help it along and give it the final push. It’s bit like if you break a stick in half, often there is a piece of bark joining the two halves together, and you have to either break or peel it off the other half of the stick. (If you don’t see what I mean, I recommend you go outside and find a stick!) Similarly, my hair breaks or splits until finally and there’s one tiny strand of hair left that seems to just hang on, which I am compelled to snap off entirely. That’s the part I find most gratifying. It’s like popping a pimple (which I also enjoy) or picking scabs (which makes me cringe!). There’s some sort of pleasure to be had in finding a half broken strand of hair and snapping off that very last fibre that’s holding it together. I recently saw Doctor Oz on Oprah explaining that all of these habits are part of the natural grooming rituals we do in order to keep in touch with our bodies, like picking your nose, or looking in the toilet after use. These urges are actually very important for recognising what’s normal with our body’s functions health-wise.
I believe the hair phenomenon is far superior to any other bad habit, due to the fact that we have so many single hairs on our head (well some of us anyway). The possibilities of hair-snapping are infinite. And I only do it to hair that’s already breaking. I could sit there all day and still find another suitable candidate. And sometimes, the ones I really enjoy, are when the hair has not broken but frayed at various points, taking on the effect of a feather. It’s quite beautiful. But then SNAP, and it’s gone. Or sometimes I can even see the process of the hair splitting half-way up the strand. I used to leave those but now, as soon as I see one, SNAP!
So if one were to ever look through my window while I’m working, and see me completely engrossed in my hair, almost as if I were sifting through each strand, it would look like I’m not working at all. But what’s really going on is the deepest intellectual thought that will eventuate into some kind of master piece. So hair-snapping is a really important part of my work routine. And on that note I had better get back to work!
Anyone else have any bad but gratifying procrastination habits they’d like to share? Please, nothing too gross!
