Cookies, cakes, and casseroles. Banana nut bread, blanched tomatoes from an uber garden crop, apple and carrot cakes.
What am I doing: procrastibaking. That is, putting off an important or urgent task by baking. I am an insecure writer.
The urgent task, of course, is my fourth novel, for which there is a late September deadline. The current word count is 31,000 words, which doesn’t even qualify as a novella! Yikes! Though there’s been conflict, chaos, and conundrums – the protagonist’s character hasn’t arced. (No, my character isn’t Noah, wink-wink)
The struggle is real, especially when a semi-reformed drug dealer (my protagonist) won a share of a boffo lotto. In Michigan, where one can buy a house for $150,000.00, a hundredth of the young woman’s share. So many distractions, such as shopping for shoes… A crop to grow, to barter.
Sadly, there’s an additional task that I’m adamantly avoiding: dieting.
My husband and I’d vowed to diet at the first of the year. We weren’t idealistic. We pragmatized.
We deferred our diet’s start until January 2, so that we’d not miss out of New Year festivities or cheat ourselves by not snacking as we watch the Rose Bowl Parade and game. These are rites in our home because attending the Rose Bowl game with our college team incited the fervor to move to CA.
As many a Midwesterner has done. What’s not to like about sunny 70 degree skies when folks are slogging in freezer weather in boots, gloves, and a tonnage of togs. Wool clothing gains an odd odor when wet. Icky, icky, icky – yuck! We came to CA as soon as we found jobs.
But I digress. Back to the diet – whose goal at the time was to lose six pounds – lasted six days… Until I baked cookies on January 8.
I will not confess what the weight loss goal is now, six months later.
And, now I think: no wonder my protagonist is having great difficulty, and is procrastinating change. I believe that Amy is just like me!
P.S. to be kind to myself, the writer, I gained the extra weight while trying to create Amy’s story in a couple of months.
Yup, I sat my butt in the chair and wrote, wrote, wrote, but, sadly, did little else… except snack.
P.S. #2
Procrasti-baking! That’s hilarious ??? great post. Snacking and writing go hand in hand or is that hand to mouth?
haha – don’t even ask how many times I’ve had to upend my keyboard to shake out crumbs!
The, there’s the time I killed the letter K (ironic, heh) with an unfortunate splash of soda 🙁
Procrastibaking is a great title! Thanks for the laugh. 🙂
Good luck with your 4th novel as you plot the way forward for your lotto-winning, semi-reformed drug dealer. Should be interesting. 😉
thanks – and, what I do is called PLOD! Hahaha
I’ll be procrastigardening this summer. Maybe I’ll burn some calories in the process. Then there’s procrasticleaning. Hey, this is fun!
YAY! A compadre! Let me know how that procrasticleaning thingie works! (my husband has already taken up procrastigardening)
I’ve done procrastibaking too.
well all righty then… We have enough to form a club!
I do love the title, too. I do a lot of procrasti- (fill in the blank)-ing. 🙂
BUT – I have started a new eating plan, and I really like it, and it’s designed to really fit your whole life (and uses real foods). Trim Healthy Mama. There is a book that includes the plan + cookbook or you can buy both separately.
I think this is finally the “last” plan I’ll be on because all the pieces of the dieting drama from the last 16 years are falling into place, while also being superseded by this one.
Love to you, two! …and with pre-diet bodies there’s just more of you to love, what could be bad about that? 😉
Love is all you need – <3