I am revising my paper on “procrastination” which has been accepted by a non-refereed journal after being rejected by one competitive refereed one and one non-competitive refereed one. I think it is a good paper but apparently it is hard to understand and not obedient enough. The non-refereed journal thought the same thing but I must make it less scholarly. Therefore I need two pieces: one which is less scholarly, for the non-refereed journal, and another which is still more scholarly than my current text, for refereed journals – because research went into this piece and I want some research credit for it. What the paper does not (yet) say, but is trying to get at, is this:
When I “procrastinate,” or when I have “procrastinated,” it has been because the space of work has been transformed into a space of pain – not because work is challenging but because my workplace is a place of abuse or, in the case of Reeducation, because my work was being used as a way to abuse me. This is why no amount of advice on time management or on the reduction of perfectionism ever worked.
This supercilious and condescending advice was in itself a further distortion of the situation since I am in fact and have always been very good on the use of time and on not having to be perfect. In fact, on this last point, I would actually like to take the luxury of perfectionism some time – to take the time to research and then explain fully the questions which really interest me.
On these topics Servetus writes, in a post I am addicted to, about another post I am also addicted to:
“I will not speak. I will not write. Because anything you say or write is only evidence of all the ways you are already wrong, were wrong from the very beginning. Once someone has said you are a failure, every time you fail you prove them right. And success is not success, it is contradiction. I do speak, I do write. But lately it is like death. It is like chewing off your paw to get it out of the steel trap. After you’ve been chewing desperately for a few years, you start to want to give up.”
Axé.