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Letters from past
John Steinbeck writes to his editor on a day he does not feel like working!
Context: Procrastination is a beast that comes to visit us every now and then without any invitation. How morbid it is to try to find a validation for the act but that is exactly what this piece is aimed at! Here is an excerpt of a letter writer John Steinbeck pens to his editor on a day he finds it hard to concentrate on his work! Next time you find yourself in the midst of a ‘dawdly day’, remember, you are not alone (obviously)!
Keywords: “I feel just worthless today. I have to drive myself. I have used every physical excuse not to work except fake illness.”
“You must think I waste an awful lot of time on these notes to you but actually, it is the warm-up period. It is the time of drawing thoughts together and I don’t resent it one bit. I apparently have to dawdle a certain amount before I go to work. Also if I keep the dawdling in this form I never leave my story. If I wrote my dawdles some other way I would be thinking all over the map.
This is not a morning of great joy for some reason or other. I don’t understand why some days are wide open and others closed off, some days smile and others have thin slitted eyes and others still are days which worry. And it does not seem to be me but the day itself. It has a nature of its own quite separate from all other days.
Today is a dawdly day. They seem to alternate. I do a whole of a day’s work and then the next day, flushed with triumph, I dawdle. That’s today.
Went to bed early last night, read happily, slept happily. Got up early and suddenly felt terrible — just terrible. Fought that off and was drained dry. Then I forced the work and it was as false and labored and foolish as anything I have ever seen. I tried to kid myself that it only seemed bad but it really was bad. So out it goes. And what do you suppose could have caused it? I just don’t know.
I wish I knew how people do good and long-sustained work and still keep all kinds of other lives going — social, economic, etc. I can’t. I seem to have to waste time, so much dawdling to so much work. I am frightened by this week before it even happens.
I feel just worthless today. I have to drive myself. I have used every physical excuse not to work except fake illness. I have dawdled, gone to the toilet innumerable times, had many glasses of water. Really childish. I know that one of the reasons is that I dread the next scene, dread it like hell.”
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