Writing is a way that I procrastinate. The main way. Here are my reasons:
You feel like someone is listening (or you can imagine someone will be in the future). This satisfies my emotional exhibitionism. Feeling intensely alone isnât enough. I must broadcast.
You feel like you make sense. Everything that flows from my fingers is golden. Whatever words I pull from my mind are fated to land here together, and lay for all time. I do not question myself when I write. Of course I am right. I am the one writing, arenât I?
And here in this private word document, my reason, which says you are being a fool and keep this to yourself so that when you later renege there will be no mess to clean, is satisfied as well.
I am suffering a crisis. I donât know who enjoys a crisis, so I should have avoided that phrase and used my own sense in making sentences. But there is a bottle of crĂšme de bananes 20.8% alcohol - holy shit, Iâm reading that for the first time and no wonder Iâm so affected - at my side, from which Iâm taking generous gulps. The sweetness is like balm. Forgive my redundancies, and inefficiencies, if you can.
This is a first (and therefore pompous) draft and first draft it will likely stay. I donât have the drive to write a great masterpiece; I only think I do, when something else needs doing. Then I remember the pleasant burn of candy-like alcohol and the way writing makes me feel powerful. More powerful than looking at the couch buried in laundry I failed at folding.
When I feel low, nothing revives me like the thought of having a great superpower. This is exactly how I view writing. It is weightless, invisible, magical ability I have everywhere at any time. I can weave worlds. I can evoke emotions. I can art. Art, art! The laundry may never be folded, but this is a small loss for art. Imagine if Walt Whitman had rather cleaned house than muse on the raptures and sorrows of existence. What beautiful things we would lack.
My delusions of grandeur would not be so detrimental if they were not sometimes unfortunately accurate. One time in ninety nine I strike up something small but relevant, and perhaps even timeless. This nugget justifies not just the time spent on itself but on the whole hundred. And for ninety nine more moments when I could have done - excuse me, it took too long to find a neat way to phrase the obvious conclusion to the paragraph, and I took another swig. Now Iâm too busy savoring crĂšme de banana to care.
The most wonderful thing about choosing writing as a way to procrastinate is that as you do, you can see a future, where, dedicated to a vision, toiling with every spare thought and moment, you painstakingly craft some work that will endure when you are gone. Something that will justify not just the time spent on itself but on the whole rest of your life, when you were folding laundry, that nobody else cares about. I think, today, I can fold laundry for myself. Or I can turn myself to art, for the world.
Is my ârealâ life these practical domestic tasks, or is it art? What is worthier of my time? I could be a great artist. If youâll forgive my pretensions Iâll tell you I can feel it in my bones. I have an incredible desire to procrastinate which, if turned towards writing, could yield so much. I just stretched and realized my equilibrium is faltering, and soon I may not care about the laundry whether I am writing art or not. This is the beauty of that other coping skill I have recently picked up. That cannot be pretended to be art in any sense. I should give it up soon.
 Anyway, yes, I could write great novels. All children are imaginative but I have done a bang-up job of retaining this as I approach adulthood. I may even be perceptive and wise, enough to seed the fantasies I could write with some echo of deep meaning. I would never do allegory, it feels too cheap. I am not subtle enough to appreciate it.
Woah, Iâve had too much. My room is spinning. There is pressure in my skull that for some reason I would describe as fluffy. Oddly I have no regrets. I feel like in the time I, practically speaking, have wasted, preserving this unimportant train of thought will be of unquestionable value. Like a mere mosquito held in amber sap for ages. A slice of life. Art! I will thank myself one day. The world will thank me. The laundry will soon become irrelevant; this worthy pursuit never will.
