If this blog ...

... were a significant other (or whatever the weasel phrase is these days) he or she would have dumped me long ago. I mean, lack of commitment, useless trinkets, and always the excuses: I'm tired, my wrist hurts, I've got nothing to say, I've had visitors, there's this other web site.

The fact is, I can see there's a pattern of abuse here.

When things are going swimmingly at the job that dare not speak its name, the blog gets all the attention it deserves. When things are tough there, who gets dumped on? The blog. And of course, acknowledging that one has a problem is the first step on the road to solving it.

The thing is those pesky deadlines and my even peskier mind. I cannot now, and never could, fool myself into bringing an externally-set deadline forward. Even when I know that my finishing is not the end, when I know that other people have to approve my work, and that that process could involve rewrites and so on, I somehow cannot build in the couple of days extra I need. It's a killer.

In the old days, with a feature or a script due Monday morning, I could happily potter round the garden all weekend. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, thoughts were being turned into stuff that would come rushing forth as Monday dawned, usually with the concluding paragraph first out. These days there's no garden to absorb me, but still I manage not to do the work in advance, no matter how much easier I know it would make my life. I've recently got into the tentative first steps of a relationship with David Allen's Getting Things Done, and already feel a lot better about managing my time. But as one of his mantras seems to be to avoid prioritising, I'm obviously going to have to figure this out on my own.

Or live with it.