I'll tell you a secret

Jill & Frances face the world together, apart

Some days, I want to be so much better at so many things, I freak myself right out, and barely make it out of bed at all. I consider curling into a tight ball and keeping the covers over my head for the whole week.

Then the dog starts to click around the hardwood impatiently, so I try to persuade her she also wants to stay in bed for a week (where she is NOT ALLOWED, but strangely, is frequently photographed). This part is pretty easy, given Frances’ limited agenda. But eventually, one of us needs to pee.

So I tell myself that after I walk Frances, the only thing I *have* to do is make myself a cup of coffee. I am often comfortable with this responsibility. Often, but not always.

When that doesn’t work, I tell myself all I have to do is get myself and my laptop to a place where someone else will make me a cup of coffee. And this is the real reason I work so often in cafes: I’m bribing myself. It’s way less expensive to go buy a coffee (OK, coffee and a breakfast) than it is to not work.

Once I’ve gone so far as to walk to another building to sit down again, I can almost face myself.

I then have a hierarchy of making myself work:

1. Work that pays
2. Things I’ve promised people, that are due
3. Things which, if addressed, will make me feel less stressed right away
4. Writing

If I have a manuscript deadline, the list gets shuffled, and looks more like this:

1. Writing

And that’s Monday for me. Now you know.