Excuses, Reasons, and Rationalizations

I’ve been away from the keyboard for a while. An extended family-visit vacation, work, and life have gotten in the way. I brought my laptop along so I could write while away. It never saw the light of day. (I even brought my dumbbells and a couple of other small pieces of workout equipment to keep up with that. I might as well have left them home.) So, the blog and the novels have stalled.

And, of course, it’s far easier to get out of a good routine than to get back into it. Useless, bad, or unhealthy routines are so much easier to settle into. Excuses, reasons, and rationalizations are easier than actually doing what I ought to be doing.

So, here we are, well into December. The holiday season always goes quickly for me. It’s busy, there are lots of days off from work, social gatherings, hours spent in the kitchen—all providing even more opportunity to procrastinate. Before I know it, January will be here, and I’ll bemoan all the time I wasted this past year.

I’ll ponder making resolutions to do better in the coming year. Though, I usually make the same resolutions every year, forget them within a week or two of the new year, and when I recall them again sometime in March, feel bad about neglecting them. On the other hand, if I don’t make resolutions, I can’t break, ignore, or forget them. I still may not accomplish what I know I could have, but I won’t have neglected the resolutions. That’s a win, right?

The coming year brings more opportunity to either accomplish what I know I should or to feel bad about not doing that. Retirement looms mid-February. The hours now spent at work will be free. Even as the Honey-do/Now-That-We’re-Retired list grows, there should be plenty of time to keep up with my writing.

Maybe I’ll use my writing as an excuse to avoid some of the things on the list.