Delay Tactics

I charged myself with reviewing twelve chapters of subject matter before taking my final exam for my on-line writing course today. It is the first and most important thing scribbled in my agenda book, but instead, after delivering our daughter to school, I:

• drank coffee and ate a cookie while writing three “Morning Pages”
• read a bit in The Artist’s Way
• reviewed and responded to email
• checked on comments to Middle Passages (I’m not enjoying the new security I installed earlier in the week)
• responded to posts on several blogs
• deleted and organized about 300 emails from my inbox
• checked Editor Unleashed to see if the “Why I Write” contest results are public yet (no)
• scheduled a work appointment for this afternoon

Finally, I printed out the open-book final exam to study, which is where I am now. But upon cracking the first chapter to review, I remembered that the dry information in the first couple of lessons failed to pertain to anything I had hoped to learn.

Somehow, it seems like a better idea to write a blog post.

To be fair, in the middle of the course I learned valuable tools relating to writing copy for the web that, all by itself, was worth the price of admission—that information has already been put to good use. The rest of the class though, while containing helpful nuggets, on the whole seemed fairly remedial.

That said, we had two weeks to finish each lesson and to complete a chapter quiz, which we could take as many times as we needed during the allotted period. (I know; cushy, right?) The same time frame holds true for this exam though, and the clock is ticking, but it's a one shot deal so when I think about taking it, I get the jitters--regardless of the fact that it is open-book.

I’m having flashbacks to college and the one time that I bar-hopped with my friends the night before, instead of studying for a final exam. Funny that I have no recollection of how that turned out.

At least this time, my procrastination won't be followed by a headache.