At this moment, the house is relatively quiet; the baby goats are in front of the television (yes, I am as surprised as you are that they are not arguing about what to watch), the coffee has been brewed and I am in front of the computer. It is a cool day in Boston; that time of the year when you wonder whether to turn on the heat at night but by noon it feels like I should be on the beach smelling like coconut suntan lotion.
So, of course, I must be writing this post with the laptop literally on my lap, cozied on the couch, sipping on coffee and letting my fingers spew forth words of greatness to my novel-in-progress. Well, you would think so but you would be wrong. I have been trying to write a story for the last year and I should be taking advantage of any free time to continue writing but it seems I can come up with a million excuses, reasons and downright sel-deceptions not to write.
The magic of Firefox brower is that I can do tabbed browsing. I have exactly 15 tabs open right now, including the online word processing tool that I use for my novel. Here is what I have been looking doing instead of writing:
- Google search for “troubleshooting your wireless network”
- Gmail
- WordPress, obviously as I need to type this post somewhere.
- blinklist.com - there is nothing like “social bookmarking” to validate my bookmark choices.
- dreamhost.com - trying to point cafeleone.com and danleone.com at cafeleone.net
- Google Calendar - I would die without this open 24/7
- RuneScape - After watching the recent South Park episode, I have been intrigued by mmorpg’s so I was just poking around.
- The Mathematics Portal on Wikipedia.org
- Ebay search for “slide rules.” - not sure why, but I really want to own one of these. (Yes, I used to use one a million years ago)
- Google search for “homemade hot sause” - I have about 12 habanero peppers literally burning a hole in my refrigerator and I thought it would be neat to make my own sauce.
- The Heroes TV show’s website. I am not sure why, but so far I love this show!
- Google search for “Order Approval Workflow” - for work
- alternet.org - for all my bleeding heart news.
- New York Times archived crossword puzzle - I LOVE CROSSWORD PUZZLES!
- Google search for “Slow cooker recipes” - just purchased one of those dang things in the hopes that my life will be made so much easier despite having to plug in yet another device into the two outlets in the kitchen.
In addition to these windows, I have iTunes open and creating yet another playlist “Dan’s music to listen to while writing.”
So guess what I am not doing? Just add another day to my non-writing of my novel.
What does everyone else do to stay focused?