procrastinating in unusual ways.

So I'm busy applying for jobs while it blizzards outside. The snow and I aren't great friends at the moment, but I'm campaigning to go sledging (sledding) tomorrow at an attempt at reconciliation.

Job applications. (Boo hiss). For the first time in my life though I'm using job search as procrastination tool. Something I can do and pretend to be productive when I really 'should' be doing something else.

What I 'should' be doing (and Jeremy would probably favour my procrastination activity, hence the inverted commas) is writing.

Deep breath.

For the past 6 months or so I've been writing a book. A story that may or may not adopt the form of an actual book. I feel ridiculous admitting that. It feels like admitting I'm auditioning for the X-Factor, following a long-held belief in my talent for singing. I should say here that while I do hope for fame and fortune (and by fame and fortune I mean a book on a shelf in a shop somewhere. I'm not hoping to be the next JK Rowling), I'm also realistic enough to realise that it's highly unlikely. I should also say that it's targeted at 14 year olds. No Ian McEwan or David Mitchell genius here. Oh and I definitely haven't spent every waking minute of those 6 months writing. The vast majority have probably been spent on facebook and watching various American medical dramas.

But either way it's true. And it's provided me with sanity- a sense of productivity, of non-worthlessness - while I've been busy being unemployed. And it's finished. Finished in the sense that it's got an ending. Not finished in the sense that I can stop working on it. Because after 'finishing' comes editing, which turns out is harder than writing in the first place. I feel like I've been posed a complicated maths problem that's niggling away in my head every waking minute. I have plans of attack, but very little attacking motivation. Or perhaps attacking ability.

So instead I'm applying for jobs, while sitting on the couch watching re-runs of 'House'.

(When is Hugh Laurie going to realise that he's just regurgitating the same episode every week and go back to speaking with an English accent and being hilarious?)

I suppose it's a fairly sensible procrastination technique - so that when I don't become a successful writer, I at least might have a job interview or two. Except I don't stand a chance if I don't cut the crap and start editing...

I'll start next week.

Ditto for the post new-year diet.

And exercise...

... although probably not exercise.