Objects of Procrastination (Day 282, year 4)

I have an assignment this week for my narrative writing class that I do not feel like doing. I began working on it Sunday, while watching the Phillies game, and decided that I was a major baseball fan and therefore could not work on my writing assignment. 

I had to watch the game, which was like watching paint drip down the walls and being unable to roll it out because you were tied up, a hostage to bad painting practices. 

Yesterday afternoon, I planned to work on the assignment, but spent a large chunk of time writing four press summaries for four upcoming Emerging Infectious Disease journal articles. The EID Journal is published by the CDC (yeah, that CDC!) and they hired me in August to support their communications. I spent much of the day trying not to cry because the academic to regular, normal writing translation felt like I was translating Greek to mandarin  (neither of which I speak). I spent so much time pitching myself as the translator of jargon to land this work, but when faced with a piece about swine flu variants, I felt like a big, giant mutated variant of a science writer. 

Anyway, I am learning several things I never wanted to about infectious disease—eating Floridian cucumbers is not worth it, avoid Australian oysters, never drink the water, and most disturbing, it is the bugs that will kill us. Best to resign ourselves to death by vector-borne virus and live while we can (while wearing Deet, obviously!). 

Last night, I planned to work on the assignment but was sidetracked by many things outside of my control—a creepy former neighbor who believes it is 1982 and it is the highest praise to make a comment about a woman’s body, a last minute Pep Rally to toss together at the Middle School, some hard ice cider from Vermont, and the latest, delicious Frieda McFadden psychological thriller. 

I love McFadden’s books. They are simple, bizarre, and the main character always makes very frank, earnest observations, often saying, “I guess he has a point,” when being gaslit by partner. The hard ice cider was delightful, too. It makes me miss Vermont. 

Today, I planned to work on the assignment, but I allowed myself to become distracted by thinking of all the amazing scientists that I should profile. I don’t care so much about whatever they do in the lab, but I’d love to know what they eat for dinner and how they procrastinate and if they don’t procrastinate, do they collapse exhausted from always facing things head on? Then I became fixated on childhood cancer disposition syndromes, which are not uplifting and truly do cause me to think about day drinking and breaking things. The fixation was short, I remained sober enough to procrastinate my assignment, yet again, and watch the Phillies game, because you know how I am a rabid fan of baseball. 

And yet again, it was like watching paint drip the walls, without a roller in sight. 



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