If I was ever going to win a gold medal, perhaps even a platinum one - it would be for pockling. There is an art to such great pockling depths: the ability to spend so much time busily bustling away at anything and everything, save that of the one thing one should actually be doing.
Sometimes I amaze myself at my mastery; Husband has caught me on one occasion - when I was late for work several years ago (a job on LIVE television where a primary requirement was to actually turn up on time) - fresh from the shower, rearranging my drawers like my life depended on it. Why was it so important to me at that very moment? I have no idea. Par for the course in my pockling world. I'll decide to steam my pores at midnight; hunt for a lost pair of gloves in summer; scrub the kitchen when guests are due for an-as-yet-to-be-cooked-dinner in ten minutes; blog when I should be finalising my research questions for a book related interview tomorrow... anything but focus on the real job in hand.
Mornings are when I really excel. I'll decide to cook an omelet as Sproglet gets his shoes on ready to walk out the door - or I'll spend twenty minutes deciding I actually have no clothes to wear at all, before selecting my jeans/black top usual daily uniform. A kiwi girl I lived with in Auckland in '95 put it bluntly: 'you fuck around.' Therefore I never have enough time and consequently I am always late. My best bout of pocking came during the writing of my Uni dissertation: our student kitchen gleamed, I ate culinary masterpieces that took me hours to concoct and I spent hours re-ordering my room which was the size of a postage stamp (student life in London aint cheap, I always took the box room to save pennies on rent). I found myself watching daytime TV with an unbridled passion - in the days before cable TV - think 'Crown Court' and 'Murder She Wrote' and some depressing relationship based fodder. The key skill in being a champion pockler is that you can justify every thing you do as being necessary - in fact almost urgent, so the thing you really should be doing can be put into second place.
You can apply this rule to anything - instead of writing Xmas thank you letters you really need to make look after your nails by doing a three hour manicure and hell, why not look after those tootsies while you at at it eh? Instead of doing the online foodshop (yawn) you really need to check out all your options on every item that ASOS has to sell right now... In fact it is imperative that you check out ASOS in case you missed something...
The thought that haunts me, keeps me from sleeping most nights at the minute is the fact that in 8 weeks I am giving up my job (that was ending in April anyway) for me to take 3-4 months to... write my book. Yes, how the fuck am I, genius pockler and time waster, ever gonna write a book? When there is broadband, a whole fridge of cookable goods and Sky+ all within two foot of me?
Answers on a postcard please...
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5 comments:
Oh THANK YOU for coming up with the perfect name for what I have always been so naturally talented at. Now if only it really was an Olympic sport I'd have an excuse not to do any other exercise and for turning up to work late at least 3 times a week. "Apologies", I'd say, in a Kelly Holmes-like way. "I was practising my pockling." And they'd nod in an admiring way and wish that they too could hang out with James Cracknell at Olympian dinners. If only.
hahahaha I love it! I knew that must be a word for this. Includes reading tons of blogs instead of working too. Good luck with the pockling switch off long enough to get your book done.
I'm the sort of opposite. I will do absolutely nothing, and leave it as late as humanly possible until I have to actually move to be somewhere or do something! Like every morning, I set the alarm for 7am, hoping to spring out of bed and greet the day. Instead, I repeatedly hit snooze til 745, which is the latest I can get up to not be late for work!
Ah-Ha-Ha-Ha! You know yourself so well. Please blog about spending loads of money as a student that you didn't actually have, all just to have 'french manicured nails' I love you cos you're 'dewy' Rachel x x
I love it. I dont know where I am in the Pockleingverse. There is always things i should be doing. Probably the things you Pockle. I can always find something else to do other than sort through my mail, tidy my wardrobe, get rid of the boxes we used to move house!...
I'll endlessly look at the internet, searching images for inspiration, then read some magazines about photos and cameras... then playing with a camera... i could be doing infinatley more useful things with my time. But i dont. Maybe i should take a leaf out of your PockleBook? when are you going to write that? ;)
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