TWO BIG THINGS HAPPENED TODAY:
- I got paid for my very first voice-acting gig! I’ve been making dumb podcasts with my pals for fun for the better part of a decade, but this person actually sought ME out! Life is amazing, and I’ll tell you all about it when it drops.
- SHUT UP THE FUCKING DEAD SPACE REMAKE DROPPED OUT OF (WHAT SEEMED TO ME TO BE) NOWHERE, WAIT, WHAT, OH GOD
We’ve been waiting.
We’ve always been waiting.
So be prepared to hear a lot about THAT between terror-barfs in the coming weeks. MAN what a game. I use the Altman Cipher in my journal and my ARCANE DIAGRAMS to this day! Ordinarily, I’d be worried about a game’s attitude and presentation of its themes aging out of relevance, but if memory serves the actual antagonist of the series isn’t the monstros themselves—monstro gonna monstro—but a corrupt religious institution trying to use the monstros to enact their flesh-convergence apocalypse-scenario, and uhhhhhh I THINK that one’s still gonna fizz when you swirl the can around a little.
[Update: okay I got to play a little, and at one point I saved the game right as a monstro was mid-disemboweling-swing right next to me, so it cut me in half, then the game reloaded my save, then it cut me in half, then it reloaded my save, on and on in what I can only describe as a goreoboros of terrible beauty. It was hilarious, 10/10, game is unironically perfect.]
January 27th:
What Are The Pros And Cons Of Procrastination?
(Obligatory reminder to subscribe to my once-monthly newsletter here, which rounds up everything I wrote in the preceding month, grants access to a curated members-only Spotify playlist, and includes a piece of exclusive bonus collectible content I will NEVER repost anywhere else, ever!)
Well, I waited until 6.30pm to start this, so let’s find out together.
Nah I goof, I goof; I’ve always been the type who has trouble working slowly and consistently, preferring instead to sprint desperately ahead of a deadline like the tears down my face, parents yelling in the background, bedtime creeping ever closer. And then I get a goddamned A-grade on it.
Once I was in college and didn’t have people telling me I was doing everything wrong but somehow still succeeding, I could see the actual shape of my deal: if I work on a thing for too long, I get bored and overthink everything and lose the ability to see the whole thing, seeing instead a million parts that I hate and can’t make cohere in my head. But if I just get to do the thing and then be done with the thing, I can trust my instincts and make one big single-piece thing that’s pretty good! That’s why I never understood the ‘rough draft’ thing when I was a kid, like I was Stephen King or some shit? Like I had an editor? Just lemme make it good the first time and we can spare ourselves like three more versions of this assignment, jeez.
All of this to say that the primary advantage to ‘procrastination’ is that some people just work better that way, and I think we need a different word for it that doesn’t bear the connotation of laziness and moral failure. The walls closing in help me focus and eliminate the extraneous, and too much time and room leave me feeling unmoored and scattered and unable to tell what’s important; it’s one of the reasons I feel like I’ve done pretty well in Bloganuary, to the extent that one can do well or poorly in a purely voluntary group activity: I don’t want to put up with me any longer than the post does, so we get along just fine.
She Who Is My Wife was the Attractive Opposite when we were in college; she started early, worked hard on a daily basis, and still ended up stressed out and unsure her perfect project wouldn’t get her fired into the Sun as punishment for her failure. It earned her a Summa Cum Laude sash when we graduated, and while I respect the hell out of that I don’t envy what she did to herself to get it. But that’s what works for her, because if she has to deal with the thing all at once she feels just as overwhelmed as I do if I have to work on it for too long. I will, once again, refer you to the settled caselaw of Strokes v. Folks.
HOWEVER: one of my goals for this year was and is to get better about, if not finishing polished posts a month ahead of time or whatever, at least assembling as much raw material as I can to make things easier on Future Me, even though that asshole hasn’t done shit for me; for example, in doing the reading for Part 2 of my court-mandated review-series on Fables volume-by-volume, I’m taking lots of screencaps and jotting down lots of thoughts that I can flesh out later. I believe in being true to yourself, but I also believe in recognizing when we could make things easier for ourselves, and this is one way I can do myself that favor.
So ultimately, “procrastination” isn’t good or bad; what’s bad is trying to force yourself to work in a way that puts a crimp in your Krampus and prevents you from both enjoying yourself and making something you’re happy with, and what’s good is recognizing the ways your process could be improved to better fit that style.
Oh also, I hope it goes without saying, all of this has been in a creative context; if we’re talking like real-life stuff or tasks you really need to take care of, I 100% advocate for doing it if it’ll take under five minutes, and scheduling a time to do it if it takes more. In post-school life you don’t get a bad grade, your car’s registration expires or your electricity gets turned off because you never set up the bill-pay, and it’s really better, easier, and less stressful to just take care of business.
–The Bageler