Halloween, The Open University and Procrastination

Well, I've been a bit quiet here in the last week and this is mainly down to one thing. My first essay (TMA -tutor marked assignment in OU speak!) for my current OU course AA316 -The Nineteenth Century Novel. I have now been studying with the OU for such a long time that it has almost become second nature, but so also have all the bad habits that I seem to have gotten into when my life was more full-on and I was squeezing my study around looking after a couple of kids, a house and working a full-time job. Now that life is less fraught, you would think I would have loads of time to do what I need to do wouldn't you? But I seem to have developed some really bad habits that are proving difficult to break. The worst one of these is procrastination. I have spent all of the last week doing anything but what I actually needed to do and finally, not only started, but also finished my essay at the eleventh hour!! There are a couple of problems with doing this. The first is that I now have a very messy house as I spent most of the week putting off everything else, using the excuse that my essay had to be my top priority but then not actually doing it. The second is that I know deep down in my heart that I could have done much better if I planned it properly and got on with it...... but what if I don't do any better?! What if I discover that I am actually no good at the academic side of things? and have wasted all that time and money that I've invested? What if I don't really make the grade? I kind of like to foster the fantasy that I am some kind of undiscovered genius who, because of circumstances has never been able to reach her full potential, and I have almost written a book of excuses inside my head (never to be written down and published of course) on the subject of why I don't do what I want to do or need to do. Really, there is one reason and one reason alone for this as there is for probably millions of other people, and this is Fear.

Fear is a very powerful motivation for doing (or not doing) loads of things and was essential for our survival in the past when our lives literally depended on it, but now it really is a kind of fear of the social which in turn will lead to emotional pain and the worst thing we can envisage.......the Unknown!! I have no idea what the answer is or where this fear comes from. I'm hoping that acknowledging it will let it know that I have spotted it and maybe go some way to beginning to tackle it. You never know! I read a great book last year called Gremlin Taming by Rick Carson which, although slightly Americany for my personal taste had a lot of good advice on noticing those Gremlins inside of us which really control us by using our learned and imagined fears against us. It really helped me to see that a lot of my reactions are learned responses built up in layers over years, and years, and years and that just by simply noticing we are already on the path to actually dealing with them.

So, it was that I ended up facing one of my other fears and that was taking the kids out on my own to a Halloween night organised by one of the other mums of a child in my son's class at school. I was on my own, because DH, being the wily character he is, left it to the last minute to announce that he didn't actually feel 'up' to coming out with me and the kids. I must admit I was and still am feeling a bit irritated by this. This was something, yet again, that I had managed to organise in Italian and really was more for the kids to foster relationships and add to their store of good time memories than for me. I thought that the least he could do was support me... but it wasn't to be and you cannot force someone to do something they don't want to do. Just as you cannot force someone to be happy with someone else's decision.

So I organised Halloween costumes with a strict budget and me along with a Halloween Fairy Princess and Frankenstein headed out into the cold, rainy darkness last night. The mum that organises this owns a shop in the centre of the small town where I live, and has managed to convince many of the shopkeepers to give out sweets and cakes and, in one case mini pizze to a large gang of mismatched kids bedecked in their Halloween finery. Yes, it was cold; yes, to me, it felt a bit chaotic but the kids thoroughly enjoyed the occasion ands after all the fun we then headed off to the local pizzeria for a pizza supper. The kids had a fantastic time all sitting together and eating and laughing and chatting. DD managed to gather a couple of older girls to take care of her and generally treat her the way she likes to be treated -like a princess! Whilst I found myself seated next to a couple of dads who made a huge effort to engage me in conversation and teach me the English that they know which was 'Shud up!!' A misspent youth I feel..... but I was also opposite another mum who is a German lady, married to an Italian who enjoys exercising her English every so often. A few of the parents ignored me and a few eyed me warily, but that was OK. I am just proud of myself for getting out there, feeling the fear and doing it anyway!