Cat vacuuming

[watervole]

I'm cat vacuuming, I know I am. (For those who don't recognise the term, it relates to find all sorts of 'useful' tasks to do in order to put off the evil moment when you have to actually do the one you're really supposed to be doing.)

I've cleared some junk off my desk. I've packed up exalted_mugwump's mobile phone charger that he accidentally left at home. I've sorted out some Redemption bits and bobs. But I still haven't sorted out the insurance renewal, which really needs doing now as I should compare prices before it automatically renews. For some reason, my brain is really resisting it. It's also resisting certain other tasks as well. It's as though anything requiring hard thought, as opposed to requiring little mental effort, is being shoved to one side.

I suspect it's stress related. In no particular order: I have two people close to me who've lost jobs in the last week; a friend whose mother is suffering terribly with chemotherapy; another friend fighting cancer; a touch of voice trouble and shoulder pain myself; two friends still awaiting the result of a US visa application; a couple with a marriage breakdown; and a few other bits and bobs as well.

I'm feeling a bit jittery, and I'm still putting off that insurance. Okay, here goes. I shall get the forms together and start looking at it. Gulp.

Comments

[dragoness13.livejournal.com]

... that sounds incredibly familiar (especially the list of stressful things going on). :/ Hang in there, *hug*.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

With all that going on, I'm not surprised you're stressed. Sounds like it's partly the difficulty (at the minute) of making actual decisions...

I know it can't help but have another [hug]

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

What you describe is a normal state for me. I have to constantly battle my urge to procrastinate. A trick that sometimes helps is to fool my brain into reordering my priorities. Your subconscious naturally wants you to do something easy and fun as a way of avoiding things that are difficult and boring, but the more urgent something is the more difficult and boring it seems. Uninteresting tasks like washing up can suddenly seem incredibly appealing when it's part of a work avoidance ritual. You need to fool your subconscious into believing the thing that actually needs doing is much less important than some other sacrificial task. Convince yourself that you really have to vacuum the cat right now or the world will collapse around you, then sneakily bunk off by doing the insurance comparisons instead.

It doesn't always work, sadly.

[kerravonsen]

{hug}