Julie Hayward Procrastinates

My followers – hello Mum – may recall my struggle with paperwork and the discovery, after having an assessment, when I started university, that I am dyslexic. This has helped me to understand my ongoing struggle with a life-long fight to keep on top of the paperwork, that seems to blossom around me, no matter how efficient I try to be with it.

The counselling course I started in September requires trainee counsellors to produce essays like they’re going out of fashion, or that’s how it feels.  I managed to make the deadline for the first one, by using up 8 of the allocated 30 hours tuition that I have been awarded to help me with essays, throughout the academic year.  My tutor tactfully mentioned on my eighth visit, that perhaps I should spread the sessions out, as I have another 5 essays to do this  academic year, otherwise I’ll have used up the 30 by the end of January if I keep going at this rate!

I am in the process of developing a strategy to help me with writing  essays, and I’m trying it with my next one that’s due on 19th December, which I have yet to start – it  is ‘don’t do today what I can put off ’til tomorrow’, procrastination has become my middle name. I simply don’t know where to begin – yes – ha ha, I know at the beginning, but it is making the start that’s the hardest thing to do. So I’m hoping the realisation that time is running out for the next deadline will bring about sheer panic and that will help focus my mind, either that or I’ll have a breakdown.

Since embarking on the course I’ve got through a shed load of Kleenex and had a kind of rebirthing experience, doing a family sculpt with pebbles.

Some friends have asked me if I’m enjoying the course and I suppose if I enjoyed crying, in front of a large group of people, being challenged by my tutor if I smile, (chance would be a fine thing ), trying to write essays, analysing my childhood, reading books about counselling and talking about my innermost feelings with a bunch of strangers, I would be able to answer yes, but  I’d rather clean my worst enemy’s oven with a toothbrush.

One of my avoiding writing my next essay techniques, is listening to Radio 4, yes I like to live life in the fast lane, and I am extremely perplexed that a character, Lilian, in The Archers, has men falling at her feet, yet she’s in her 60s, smokes like a chimney and is like a sponge around alcohol whereas I do yoga regularly, keep on top of my roots and get monthly bikini waxes, yet to no avail – I have abecome invisible to men, the fate that obliterates the majority of women of a certain age from the dating scene once they hit 50. So what’s Lilian got that I haven’t, apart from a 20 a day habit? 

I’m planning to email The Archers’ scriptwriters to ask them to get in the real world, either that or I may take up smoking again, perhaps I’ll have a better chance of attracting the opposite sex if I smell like an old ashtray!