Terrible thing, procrastination

In five days I get on a plane for a very long-anticipated trip home. Three of the intervening days and evenings will be fully occupied with such trivialities as work, getting a haircut, taking the cat for a blood test, catching up with a friend just passing through London, and panicked last minute Christmas shopping. (To you, it's early days yet. To me, since gifts must be packed by the time I hop on a plane at 6.30am — yes, insane, we'll have to book a cab for 3am — on Friday morning, it's last minute.) Leaving two "free" days for those other small details:

Huge (and really annoying*) editing project
Re-ordering stock for Purlescence
Preparing a knit design submission
Completing the knit project that is one of my Christmas presents
...and so on.

Of course, almost all of these things could have been done ages ago, but, um, weren't. As can be said, too, of my completely failed plans for my blog birthday (tomorrow). I wanted to do something special, but it would take time, and I'm kinda busy. So I realised this morning, my present to my blog will have to become part of the great tradition of handmade birthday presents: it'll happen. Just not right now. (A common knitter's rule of gifts is, it has to be delivered within a year of the occasion for which it was intended. That's acceptable lateness.)

Meanwhile, I'm going to do some editing. See ya.

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* I'm increasingly fed up with academics. (Extemporanea, of course, excluded.) Particularly the particular brand that I usually find myself dealing with, i.e. very clever and creative people studying something 100% up its own ass**. To be fair, a lot of what they're doing is highly innovative and has very interesting — even potentially useful — practical applications, compared with traditional arts subjects like English Lit***; but they make up for it with more rarefied, pretentious, jargon-laden and self-important "discourse" than any other field I've encountered. All of which I could forgive if they were just a bit more efficient about it... but inevitably, deadlines are not so much stretched, or missed, as warped into an entirely different dimension (years late is not uncommon), where the writer constantly lies to you about when things will happen, keeps you waiting for months (at least), then suddenly hands it over and demands that it's done right now, because you see, they have a deadline. And the work itself, dear goddess, it's so sloppily put together you'd think they have no interest in their own writing. Plus, frequently there is a remarkable absence of academic rigour or understanding — and these are PhDs; since I'm way below them in the degree stakes, I probably don't have a right to comment, but seriously.

And of course the best part is that they are all so enormously impressed with their own subject, they think it's an enormous treat for you to be working on it. Really, every time, the writer or editor tells me proudly, "You're going to enjoy this, it's really fresh, really exciting, really amazing stuff."

But of course it is, dear.

Phew, that rant came out of nowhere. Sorry.

** Try Googling "site-specific media arts".

*** Which of course I love dearly, but I've never yet managed to convince myself that it's useful. Essential, yes, but not useful. (I can just see the irate comments brewing even now...)