Work avoidance begins in earnest

Yes, I have chosen the shittest picture I can find.
It's a supposed to be a desktop background, but who the hell
runs on 1024x768 any more?  Plus, I found it on Angelfire.
Remember Angelfire?

A quick post to demonstrate how easy it is to fall prey to my addiction.  UPDATE:  I've discovered something about what my addictive behaviours are doing.  Read on for more information.

I had a lovely weekend.  It started with babysitting for my neice and nephew, two adorable 5-month-old twins.  I love babies, and I love these babies.

Then followed 3 days of DIY around the house, pulling up carpets, buying rugs and painting dining room furniture.  Hard work, but good times with my family.

No fantasy stuff for a good 4 days.  Built up some momentum with real life, in the hope that some of it would carry over into work this morning.

I've managed about an hour's work before starting to drift off into work-avoidance.  I realise that this blog counts as work-avoidance, but I feel as if I'm on the edge of a precipice.  Perhaps if I blog about it, that would be sort of like peering over the edge, then I'll be able to get on with my day.  Let's find out!

Here's what I need to do at work:

1. Mark a load of placement tests for students who want to join the classes I run
2. Contact the students with the results of the test and offer them a place in one of my classes
3. Sort out any questions or issues they have and get them enrolled onto a course

It sounds simple enough.  Step 1 takes about 5 minutes.  I've got that part down.  I've been marking the test for about 2 years now, and I know all the answers and I know how to mark the free writing bit.  

Step 2 is where I hit my block.  This is the bit, along with the next bit, that I really struggle with.  I've made it as easy as possible for myself by setting up email templates and building a spreadsheet to help me paste all the details of the courses.  It takes about 5 minutes per student, but still I avoid it for some reason.  UPDATE:  I now know the reason that I avoid this bit.  Full details below at the end of the post.

Step 3 is the hard part, where emails come back with problems and questions, and people can't make those times on those days, or they want more classes, or they want to do something else, or they can't pay.  It goes backwards and forwards for a few days until they eventually settle on a course, then they have to come in and do the forms and pay the money.  It's a massive faff, and I sometimes have to meet people in person, or, worse, call them on the phone.  There's always a chance that I won't be able to find a suitable class for someone and everyone will be disappointed.

So at Step 2, this starts to happen:

Would you quit it?  I'm tryna get shit done here...

Step 3 involves dealing with people, which I hate, dealing with telephones, which I hate, and facing the possibility of failure if I don't find a suitable class for someone.  I live in fear of Step 3, so I try not to make it happen by putting off Step 2.  

This is insane logic, of course, because after 2 weeks, I start to get shirty phone calls from people who haven't heard the results of their placement tests, and that makes it even harder for me to deal with them, and increases the rate at which I lose students to other providers in the area.  It makes no sense, but I do it all the same.  Here I am, doing it right now.

In the past I've set up elaborate systems based on punishment and reward for getting through Steps 2 and 3, spreadsheets that would accumulate merits and demerits that never got finished, never got used, and completely failed to make me more productive.  I did manage to create some pretty good systems for speeding up the monotony of cutting and pasting course details, so my work-avoidance isn't all bad.  Still doesn't mean I don't live in fear and hatred of actually contacting the people I need to contact, though.

I'm lucky today in that I don't have anything in my head for my fantasies to get hold of.  I'm not in the middle of a sissymaid fantasy, and I haven't found any pictures or websites that I can get my teeth into.  I had a good weekend, basically, so there's nothing there that I need escape from.  However, I'm sure that given enough time I'd be able to find some kind of foothold.  But here I am on the blog, taking about half an hour to get some thoughts out.  Hair of the dog, and all that.

So here's my plan:  Apply some of my submissive thinking to the task at hand and frame my motivation in the following terms:

I have nothing better to do with my time.

There's nothing that I might want to do with my time that is more worthwhile than providing prompt and obsequious service to the people who wish to join my courses, making my department, and by extension my boss, look good, and earning money to make my wife's life more comfortable.  It's a perverse way of looking at things, but if I can stay focused on my new mantra, I may be able to save myself some trouble and avoid this happening:

She's a real ball-breaker.
I bet she can crush a polystyrene cup in one hand, too

I have nothing better to do with my time.

ȹ

UPDATE:

Everybody PANIC!

Having resolved to focus myself on Getting Shit Done today, I have finally discovered the reason I avoid doing so in the first place.  It's partly as I describe above, avoiding failure and avoiding telephone conversations, but there's one other thing that I forgot about until I was presented with it after finishing this blog post:  PANIC.

I'm trying to deal with the pile of papers on my desk and I'm losing my shit.  Someone came to see me about the classes I could offer her, and after talking to her for 10 minutes I had to go and calm the fµck down for half an hour.

No wonder I find ways to avoid this.  This is not good for me.  I'm protecting myself, in a weird, completely counter-productive way.  My own mind and body are conspiring against themselves in order to gain temporary respite from a problem that will only get bigger the more I ignore it.

I'm really very very confused now

My sexual fantasies are the easy option here.  I can escape my reality by indulging in them, becoming completely absorbed in the warm, comforting glow of external authority and getting lost in the programming challenges of Visual Basic.  Without these projects to divert my attention, without these blinkers, I am left with only fear and panic.  I flip out completely.

Question is:  what's causing me to panic like this, and how can I get past it?

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