On Parents & Procrastination

An email to my siblings:

I'm coming out of a four months depression (essentially) and am getting back to my better self -- which means having some problems with procrastination. I had some insights this morning as i was thinking about my experience yesterday, and wanted to know if you experienced this growing up (and if it plays out for you).

Yesterday i had a "free" afternoon. I would be able to "get something done," and there are certainly long overdue things that needed to go done (*cough*the barn*cough*). My experience of procrastination certainly has some sense of dread, and what i realize this morning is that i have a hard time remembering a weekend when, as there was nothing else planned, our family moved on to working on a project all day-ish and was happily successful at the end of the day. What i remember would be that there would be fights in the morning, that eroded into the "productive" time of the day, that things would get done by the end of the day but there wasn't some glowing sense of successfully having done what planned, but a lingering frustration and failure.

I feel i've internalized Mom and Dad's fights before working on a project.

I'm not asking if you feel like you've done that or if you have procrastination problems, but do you remember the pattern of planning to do something, fighting, and then getting something (else) done, but not carrying through on the plans?

My guess about their dynamics is that Dad, having completed a work week of getting things done (invisible to Mom) was not ready to continue with the getting things done and was sabotaging the plans (probably because an honest statement of "I'm tired, it was a hard week," was unacceptable).

Sound familiar? Or is this selective memory on my part? I suppose it's the memory & lessons i've got, no matter what *yours* are, but i have a layer of grad school depression and procrastination that i'm currently disregarding.

Thanks for listening,

[your sister]

Airfare index

I want a couple airfare indexes, that, like the Dow and Nasdaq, can be characterized like "commuter flights" and "continental flights," maybe even "vacation flights." And one index could be "prices paid to fly today" (which averages over sales and must fly no matter the cost tickets) and another could be "price to fly today" and "price to fly in 15 days."

This site has one that stopped in 2007: http://www.airtravelchannel.com/

I guess it is just too weird -- because airfares are utterly impossible to comprehend.

But if there were indexes like this, maybe the real drivers could become more obvious.

(no subject)

One last post.

My brother replied

I am an unfocused disorganized procrastinator and I owe my station in life to luck smoke and mirrors.

Sounds very familiar. It plays out in my own life because I turn to putty when the adrenaline subsides and "tough week, I am tired" is not a valid plea (in my case because my spouse has a more complicated professional and parental workload and is actually more focused and efficient than I am and my procratination actually increases her probs).

Things i did well yesterday: I acknowledged the dread i was feeling as i faced an afternoon where i could get something done. I did not beat myself up. I wish i could have gone closer to my fears and negative feelings, but perhaps that was for the best (as the insight this morning was novel). I did the laundry, rode the exercise bike, and piddled a bit with genealogy. That is, i gave myself alternative places to make progress and "get things done" and be proud of myself, even if i didn't do what i was supposed to do.

Oh, lola_kristine, Wallander has KENNETH BRANAGH as a main character. Who cares if it's not a quirky as Wire in the Blood?! (PS: thanks for the reference, we enjoyed the first episode last night. Nice to see the Swedish landscape, too!)

This morning just before i awakened i was dreaming about folding myself double and breathing to escape my fear and dread, something i actually do at my desk (bend forward, head down, breathe, try to relax...). I woke and realized a few things:

* i can't/won't visualize myself smoothly succeeding at something. There's this barrier -- drama, trauma, struggle -- that immediately overlays any "i should do" with a sense of futility and impossibility. The sense of self sabotage sits there as an inevitable companion.

* that's when i "clicked" with that inevitable companion being the memory of my parents fighting.

* i have this urge to hire a coach or therapist to work with me on this, but i simultaneously begin building impossible criteria (they'll have to under stand my depression, and they have to be able to work with me around the pain i feel about my family, and ...) and suspecting i want someone to fight with about whatever i'm procrastinating on. Working on procrastination seems suspiciously like procrastinating. Mindgames. Hmm.

* i cry a little bit, feeling the pent up grief of my childhood, a different grief than the one around wishing for archtypical Mother, but this grief around my parents' dynamic, my dad's conflicting wants -- "I only have N weekends left in my life," he'd say, probably when he was my age or a little younger, "I want to spend them fishing not doing this." And he'd spin his story of being frustrated about how much stuff Mom has and wanting to live in a shack in the woods eating out of a tin can with just one spoon to wash.

Dad did teach me about TCO at an early age. (TCO: total cost of ownership.)

Not sure what's next. Just writing this all this morning is keeping me from engaging on the prep for the 11 am meeting (there's one at 10, as well).

Fail flail! Invest so much energy in the fail-flail-adrenalenine rush that the long empty afternoon becomes yet another battleground for fail-flail!

New Madrid quake was likely a 7 not an 8

Aw, fiddle. The New Madrid quake wasn't that strong. When the Whale swallowed the Minnow, i tried to demonstrate to myself that the Whale HQ near Columbus OH was at risk of a New Madrid shaking, but found that was out of even the extreme estimates.