aisa des hai mera and musings on the shirkmonster

[lobelia321]

I've been posting a bit in the past about when I'm feeling down and doomy'n'gloomy so today I thought I'd post about a moment when I felt happy. The sun was shining and I bopped round the living room, listening to Aisa Des Hai Mera from the Veer Zaara soundtrack CD. (Go here and scroll down for an audio sample.)

On the table sat a pile of to-be-marked essays and I realised with a burst of relief that I was still the same old shirker and had not been entirely eaten up by the Evil Stepford Wives. I can keep my SINK SHINY but I can also keep my shirky ways. In fact, it seems unlikely that the shirky ways will ever go away as there seems to be a core personality in here somewhere that will keep asserting itself, no matter what. So I got to thinking that maybe I should stop castigating the shirking part of me and just embrace the shirk.

And then I was reminded of someone on Radio Four's Mid-week with Libby Purvis (was it John Glaxon? can't remember the name! that's the drawback with switching on the radio half-way through a programme) -- anyway, this man writes on psychology and the subconscious, and one thing he said was that creativity happens when the mind seeks to entertain itself. In other words, we shouldn't, for example, try to stimulate our children all the time by ferrying them hither and thither but just to allow them to become bored because being bored, their minds will seek to come up with something to entertain themselves.

So I thought, maybe shirking is a way of being mentally creative!

*waves happily at sheldrake*

The thing is not to let the shirking make me unhappy.

In other news, this morning I also bared my breasts at Brad Pitt who ogled them from above my SHINY SINK. Votive Brad. What a world.

Comments

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

a) you hussy. (Votive Brad, indeed!)
b) shirking (which for me seems to mean pottering about and avoiding the to-do list) is my best route to invention. Which is unfortunate for the spiders who would otherwise have taken over the living-room.
c) better pr0n through floor-cleaning! (<-- scrubber)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

a) Entirely heh. *g*

b) What spiders? How does being inventive get rid of spiders? Is this some new fandom?

c) What is <-- scrubber?

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

a) unsurprised
b) the being inventive doesn't get rid of them, but the 'preparatory' housework -- e.g. flicking around Camp Feather-Duster, etc -- tends to wreck little spidery homes
c) I am scrubber! See me scrub!

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

I occasionally worry about myself, because most of the time, I'd rather read than do ANYthing. Reading (anything from the label on a detergent bottle to Finnegans Wake commentaries) is my default mode, from which it sometimes increasingly difficult to make myself shift gear. Housework is a disaster zone because you can't read while doing it - an experiment in ironing while reading ended up with frazzled trousers and a minor burn - but brushing teeth gets a thumbs up because it's entirely possible to read while so doing. Have always liked that unsubstantiated anecdote of Emily Bronte kneading bread with a book propped up in front of the kneading trough. If I ever kneaded bread, that is precisely how I would do it.

There should be a Shirker Reading Index which gives high ratings to activities which can comfortably be accomplished with a book to hand.
Marking of course rates a zero... My sympathies.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Reading (anything from the label on a detergent bottle to Finnegans Wake commentaries) is my default mode, from which it sometimes increasingly difficult to make myself shift gear.

Ha, mine too! I'm not sure I've ever completely understood that before, but it's absolutely true.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I lurched to a halt in the middle of 'The Sword in the Stone', where the Wart is pulling the sword out: something like "there was writing on the stone, but he didn't read it." WHAT?! How can you *not* read words put in front of you?

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this is a new idea for me. The idea that the shirking is not UTTERLY WRONG and BAD and MAKING ME A BAD PERSON, I mean. Interesting...

there seems to be a core personality in here somewhere that will keep asserting itself, no matter what

A while ago my mum turned to me and said, "This will stay with you for the rest of your life, you know - the laziness." Which seemed something of a depressing thought at the time. But as, at the age of nearly 60, she manages to do two full-time jobs and not become completely cocooned in cobwebs, I have to conclude that being a compulsive procrastinator can't be as seriously catastrophic as I imagine.

*creative procrastination*

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Not my original concept, and I blush to say I cannot give you the attribution. But years ago, in an academic periodical (perhaps Chronicle of Higher Education perhaps another), I read a brilliant piece by an academic on how procrastination worked for him and how it could work for others.

Bascially, it works by having multiple projects going on at the same time (like, normal life in my neck of the woods), and you shirk one by working on another. So I can put off working on X project by spending my time on Y. One must modify it as one needs--juggling deadlines and preferences and so forth. For example, having just signed a contract for a big project due in two years, I am fairly sure I will use my novel in progress to shirk that project, while I can use the Big Two Year Project to shirk something else.

Creative Procrastination.

As he said, everybody procrastinates. The secret is to make *your* procrastination work for you.

And having a nifty name like creative procrastination allows one to flourish the philosophy around proudly. I teach it to all my graduate students (my undergrads--well, I don't think that would be best for all concerned. Am afraid I use direct threats with them.)

Re: *creative procrastination*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is interesting and I may try it. Do you find it works? My problem is that I validate some things I do and others not. So shirking writing the book by marking papers is fine as marking papes is validated as a valid project in my head. Even shirking marking papers by cleaning the house using Stepford Club is allowed because cleaning the house also has value in my culture. Things become thorny when it's shirking writing the book by wanking in the bath or shirking writing a fic by copying and pasting endless HP WIP. The three latter activities just listed are difficult (in my world and in my head) to file under the heading of 'project'. Do you see the problem? If everything starts to be validated as a 'project', the creative shirker will find ever more useless things to do that don't fit the schedule.

Re: *creative procrastination*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Contd from previous tig:

I'm just doing a doubletake on my own word 'useless'. This is the bane of my shirking life at any rate, the guilt and the labelling of activities in a hierarchy. Perhaps if I upgraded 'writing fic' to a Project, I could make this method work for me? But this is a very difficult thing to do in the psycho-world of my brain.