It's not procrastination, it's fear

"Do not call the inability to start laziness. Call it fear." ~Julia Cameron

"Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear." ~Julia Cameron

Do I procrastinate? Do I procrastinate? Do I procrastinate? 

It doesn't matter how you say it, the answer is always a resounding, YES! I do, but I've never thought about it as being connected to fear. I was a huge procrastinator when I went to school, but it never really bit me because I always found school pretty easy. I'd leave my assignments until the last minute. In fact, I wouldn't start them until I felt so nervous about not starting them that I was compelled to do the work. Then I would sit down and crank out an essay or a project and, inevitably, I'd do pretty well. Eventually, I thought I was doing well because I was leaving it until the last minute. I tricked myself into thinking that I couldn't produce good work unless it was completed at the last minute. What I failed to see, was that if I sat down and spent some time on my work, I might actually start getting even better grades. I think Julia Cameron is right, and that at the root of my procrastination back then was a fear that I wouldn't produce really good work, so I would avoid starting the work until my back was against the wall and I absolutely had to do the work or risk failure (and failure was not an option with my Dad). Fear of failure overrode my fear of producing something less than perfect. I think the same holds true for my writing. I have a difficult time facing my writing some days because I'm afraid I'm going to produce something that is far from perfect, or even good, so I do other things. Thankfully I've learned that I produce a great deal of junk with my writing so the fear of producing something less than perfect has diminished over the years, but I still have those days where I do everything I can to avoid writing that next section. That's what I'm doing today, I'm avoiding writing the end of a new book because I'm not sure about it. I think if I sit down and start writing, I'm going to finally see that this book that I've been working on for months is actually a piece of junk...pretty weak...needs a complete rewrite. Fear, I've come to realize, is at the root of just about everything.