Saturday, August 1, 2009

Helping Others as a Means of Procrastination

Today, despite it being one of the few prescious days of the week where I can grab a few hours to edit my long-overdue films, I skipped out on any work of that sort and helped my curly red-haired jewish long-time collaborator since freshmen year friend move from his apartment on Sullivan between Prince and Spring St.'s around the corner (or rather, through a playground) to an apartment probably in the same place as his old apartment, just on a parallel street (Thompson Street between Prince and Spring.)

Of course, this is a very good friend of mine, one who I've collaborated with... well, I guess I said that already... but anyway, I think I tend to find myself in these kinds of situations a lot (although, this one, more than any others, NEEDED to be done, I swear!) where I use opportunities to help my friends as a means of procrastination, but the kind of procrastination where I don't feel guilty. Basically, I think it goes something like this: When I procrastinate by playing games or watching something useless I eventually feel bad and beat myself up about not having done any work and in a sense, even if it's only momentarily, motivate myself to do some sort of work. However, in situations like this, I can procrastinate and not feel guilty because, well, I'm working, and it's not like I can argue with that.

This kind of thing doesn't just happen with helping someone move but comes down to working on too many productions too, or volunteering my time for too many things. I remember being told by my screenwriting teacher that I need to be selfish about my time, to reserve time for writing (and this applies to other things such as editing too) and to hold onto it tightly. I don't think I'm very good at being greedy, but I guess I should start to work on that in these areas if I ever want to complete something of my own.


In other news, I think my attention span is quickly becoming shorter and it's getting annoying. I really need to find some sort of solution to that problem.

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