I procrastinate. Most of the work I do is done to avoid doing something else. Still procrastination pays dividends. I used to often find myself delaying attention to my lawn, often on nice cool days only to finally wheel out the lawnmower on the hottest day of the week . . . . and enjoy cutting the grass, not paying particular attention to the temperature! Same thing with journalism. I had two and a half weeks to produce my story about local food trucks for the September Springfield Business Journal. Absolutely critical (which is like saying “each and every”) to my stories are the photographs; interviews less so. Just as I know I will cut the grass, I know I will write the assignment. There is never any doubt of this. Still I procrastinate and wallow, for days, in the self-imposed SHAME that I manufacture for myself from the process. By the time I must put words into play, I’m comfortable. The words come easily as apples from the low branches of a tree.
So it is, as well at the airport museum where I’ve been since 5:30 this morning. I’ve been on a “marathon,” on my feet filing away in the Research Room, fully focused for easily 11 of the 12.5 hours I will have been here when I leave at 6p. I had no breakfast, nor lunch, nor snack during this time because I didn’t have a penny in my pocket, I”m running low on checks, I didn’t want to leave the museum to drive home where I have food, and equally importantly, I knew food would slow my pace, and today, I was pushing myself. I liked the challenge, and I knew I would have all the food I wanted later. I was grateful for the coffee and water I’ve consumed during short breaks to check e-mail and Facebook — about every hour and a half.
Bombardier CRJ of United Express takes off from Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport, Springfield, Illinois, September 1, 2012.
So I’m going to head upstairs and close a door, turn off some lights and head home.
The day has been good to me, and I have been good to the day.
Live long . . . . . . . . . and proper.
Once, as I was filing I noticed a United Express Bombardier CRJ airliner taxiing to the end of a runway, realized it would be passing nearby as he rose from the runway, and was where I needed to bne for some decent pictures I posted on Fb within minutes. That kind of diversion made a lot of the fatique disappear, and the afternoon has whizzed by.
I’m savoring, as I write these words, the contentment that comes from knowing when I have posted this installment of the “Approaching” blog and posted notice of it at Facebook, all I have to do is go upstairs and turn off the fan and lights and close one door to be done with the day.
