Procrastination is the Devil!

Wow, this has been a busy week!! Sorry I haven't posted for so long. Last weekend D.R., Cooper, and I went to Rapid City to get away and relax for D.R.'s birthday. We didn't do a whole lot except lay around the hotel room and go swimming, but it was fun. Cooper has been sick for a few days so I finally took him to the doctor today, and the poor baby has an ear infection that is so bad the doctor said his eardrum is almost perforated, and will probably perforate in the next day or two. I stayed home with him today and he was not his normal, happy self. I feel bad for not catching it sooner; I know he feels terrible.

The last couple of days I have realized that procrastination is something that really gets in the way of my goals. There will be something that I really need to do, but for whatever reason I am dreading it, so I just put it off and put it off and put it off. I started this bad habit with homework in high school and college - leading me to pull more all-nighters than I care to admit trying to get something done the night before it was due.

What starting me thinking about this is that I got accepted to nursing school before I found out I was pregnant. Then I deferred admission until this fall and was accepted for this fall. I decided several months ago that I wasn't going to go, but for some reason, I was just DREADING writing the letter to decline the position. I don't know why, I guess it just required me to be out of my comfort zone to think about what I needed to say. Anyway, since classes start in less than a month, I decided I better finally let them know I wasn't coming so they could fill my spot. Guess what? Once I finally sat down and wrote the letter, it was a breeze and took me less than 5 minutes to write. Why couldn't I have just done that 2 or 3 months ago and been done with it instead of letting it sit there in the back of my mind as this THING that I had to do and was dreading.

I think that I definitely need to go outside my comfort zone and just get started on some things that I have been putting off for a long time. One of these things is finishing my thank-you notes from all the gifts we got when Cooper was born. I am horrified to admit that I haven't sent any of them. I wrote about half of them the first month after he was born, stamped and addressed them, and they are still sitting on my dresser, waiting for the rest to be done so I can mail them. The postage rate has even gone up since I put the stamps on!!! I had wonderful intentions of finishing the rest of them, and the last 3 or 4 months I've started to wonder if never is better than being 9 or 10 months late. What do you think?

Procrastination is definitely something that has also held me back in my professional life. I won't pursue something as hard as I should because I want to wait until I have more time to devote to it. I now know that I just need to get started and work on it as much as possible when I can. This has been an issue for me with starting my online business. I know what I want to do, but I have to go outside my comfort zone to get some of the licensing and accreditation that I need once I have the business up and running. They taught us at the conference to just get started and worry about all that later. So I am just going to start building content on my website and worry about all that later.

I also learned that no matter what your idea is, there is a market for it. I know that what I want to do will work, I just have to put it in action. I have let other people's sometimes negative input sway my decision about what I want to do for my business, and now I have decided that no matter what I choose to do, I can make it successful if I work hard enough at it.

So, goals for this week: work on at least 3 things I have been procrastinating about
1. Thank you notes
2. Start my website
3. Tax paperwork at the shop

As for working on my goals, I've done pretty well so far, but my body is having trouble adjusting to its new sleep schedule, diet, and exercise regimen, so I haven't been to the shop as early as I'd like. I'm going to work on that this week as well, and other than that things are going well.

I also bought a couple of new books last weekend, one was Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat, which I haven't read yet. The other was Skinny Bitch, which was not what I was expecting, but if anyone would like to be scared and grossed out into becoming a vegetarian, let me know and you can borrow it.