Thursday Thirteen: Distractions

With apologies to Paige who did the last lovely Novel Racers coffee morning post, and to my fellow Racers who've read this shameful list already:

The top 13 distractions that keep me from writing:

1. The day job.
   
2. The wonderful, bloody Internet in general where it's so easy to click your way into oblivion without realizing how the hours are flying, and specifically...
3. The blog. Writing it. Reading others. Fiddling with widgets, stats etc.
4. Facebook. Another black hole where time takes on strange otherworldly dimensions and five minutes mutate into five hours.
5. Streaming media, specifically Desperate Housewives and [gulp] movies.
6. Obsessive checking of e-mail accounts.
7. Clothing catalogues. Home decor catalogues. Gardening catalogues. Especially the online sort.
8. Reading. It's like chocolate for me - once I start a good one I can't stop.
9. Dreaming. I mean the open-eyed sort. I'm a chronic daydreamer, always have been. It's the one thing my teachers all complained about. I can do it for hours - nay, days - at a time.
10. Chores. The minute I decide to get the writing done I am assailed by a compulsion to do the washing and cleaning. I also need to shave legs, pluck eyebrows and colour hair because everything must be in perfect order before I can give myself over to the world of self-inflicted fiction. Since I rarely (translation: never) achieve the elusive 'perfect order' it's a wonder I ever get any writing done at all.
    
11. Staying up most of the night so I'm all headachy and cranky next day and no good for anything.
12. Worry, fear, obsessing over everything, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble sales rankings to offspring, health, ecology, grey hairs sprouting in inconceivable places (...like eyebrows! Caught ya there, didn't I!)... You name it, I worry about it. These are paralysis-inducing enemies of the word count.
13. All of the above, I fear, are just excuses for the good old-fashioned laziness. I've elevated laziness to an art form. Pity I can't sell it. (Wanna buy some Grade A laziness? I'll knock 10% off the top - just for you!)
    

Mea culpa. I'll be stronger. I'll be better. I promise. Really!

Lagniappe: The best post title I've seen this week: F*ckety, f*ckety, f*ck!
(I won't say where I saw it but the poster's computer crashed and she hadn't done backups. Yes, she's a writer.) Those words have afflicted me with a brain worm and I'm afraid they'll slip out my mouth at some inconvenient moment...