Paralysis

My cousin's wedding is on Saturday, and we need to leave in a few hours. I have tons of work left to do, I'm not packed and someone is coming to watch the cat and the house is a train-wreck of half-finished homemade Christmas presents and school supplies and unsorted coupons and to-be-read books. We are drowning in paper products at Chateau Travolta.

Forcing myself to focus is almost physically painful. I can do it, but only for a few minutes at a time. I'm not quite sure what is wrong with me, but it could be that I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off and not going anywhere except the bookstore to stare at the young adult section and try to figure out how it works. I haven't taken days off to putz around in a long time, and usually it's all I can do to not immediately fill those days with cleaning the house and raking the leaves and making more of the homemade Christmas presents and and and until I return to work feeling more exhausted than when I left. I desperately need to recharge my batteries, but I'm my own worst enemy in that arena. But this time I can barely get myself to Iowa for my own cousin's wedding.

I couldn't even blog yesterday, though I have so much on my mind.

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The funny thing is that I never in my entire life have had a problem with procrastination. I find it hard to even identify with procrastinators -- how could you possibly want to put something off when the guilt of an unfinished thing will then just sit over your head like a raincloud? My anxiety is raincloud enough and the voice in my head screaming DO IT FINISH IT GET IT OVER WITH even made me graduate college a semester early. Is procrastination a present you get when you're almost forty, along with abdominal fat and crow's feet?

I'm going to go stare at my to-do list now and try to cross something, anything off it.