A blog about blogging

Got asked to do a guest blog recently.

It’s one of those things that makes you feel like you’ve arrived – fame is beckoning!

Or would be if I could complete it…

As my regular reader would be aware most of my blogs lack a certain seriousness about them – it got omitted in the contract I think – so actually writing something without falling back on an appalling sense of humour is actually more complicated than I thought it would be!

And it’s a topic that would absolutely lend itself to lightheartedness on the principle that it’s complex and scary and could worry the hell out of the average reader, let alone me.

So eight days later and 178 words done and still unfinished.

What makes it so difficult to do compared with (say) this one?

A number of reasons cross my mind:

• This is in the calendar therefore it gets done (holidays excepted) BECAUSE it’s in the calendar. Chicken and egg revisited,
• Even if I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m going to write about the terror of staring at a blank screen leads to the words starting to tumble out, and
• Because it’s stream of consciousness there doesn’t have to be a topic I have to keep to – if I want to spout drivel about x, y or z there’s nothing to stop me.

Whereas with the guest blog:

• I’m (in my own head at least) tied to the topic I said I’d deliver on,
• I’m supposed to be an “expert” so I feel I have to be able to back up assertions with third party evidence or articles, and
• I could put it in the diary but I know any excuse to do other things – especially of a fee-earning nature – will give me the option of procrastinating (not that I need an option) I must admit.

Which got me thinking (I know, a dangerous thing but please humour me) – is there an opposite to procrastination?

Like anticrastination?

And how can I teach myself to use it?

A small diversion to Google – procrastination itself I don’t hesitate to admit throws up the following article.

Apparently it ought to be antecrastination (Latin “ante” rather than Greek “anti” preceding Latin “cras” for tomorrow) but the following comments DID make me smile:

• I thought of precrastination at first but that appears to be the act of planning to procrastinate, and
• I’ll get back to you on this…

Bless.

Well, sure beats working for a living anyway.

This whole article feels like precrastination in fact!

I continue to improve following the operation but the tiredness still continues. One client is around 100 miles west of here and gets a visit once a quarter. Did this on Tuesday – two hour drive, four hours hunched over a laptop and two hours back.

Needless to say tired all day yesterday but, annoyingly, still tired today!

Superb working lunch today with client and straight back to do this post.

There is an art to the good meeting – if you come away having forgotten to hand over what you specifically took to give them because you’ve been laughing so much, that’s probably the right tone to the meeting.

If you can detail their misdemeanours while still provoking laughter and “sigh, it’s not a typical meeting without being told off by you” with a smile on their face, you’re probably doing something right.

Whether they pay any attention? That’s another question altogether. And the outcome is probably NOT predicated on how stern or otherwise the delivery.

It’s winding down to the end of the month – which ends on a Friday as well – so a double end to the week. The billing all but got completed this morning – just the one late one that happens late every month (yes, you Lorraine) with a visit to my osteopath after I sign off here.

If it wasn’t for the bl..dy emails…