Emma's Top Time Wasters!

If there's one thing any writer knows, it's the art of procrastination.  You sit at your computer, the cursor blinks back at you, inspiration begins to strike... Then half an hour later, you're watching a video of a dog who can talk and you can't remember what you were originally planning on doing.

Now, sure, when inspiration really strikes, I can totally lose myself in my writing.  I'll be hammering away at my keyboard for hours at a time.  But it's fair to say that we all - all of us, not only writers - have those moments when we just can't quite make ourselves get on with the task at hand.  

If you're someone who finds that happening to them on a regular basis, help is on hand!  No, I'm not going to teach you how to stop procrastinating - that sounds far too much like hard work.  Instead, I'm going to tell you what my favourite time-wasters are, so that you can enjoy them for yourselves.  You'll thank me one day.  Probably not on a day an assignment is due, though...

1. YouTube

You should watch Dan and Phil.  I mean, right after reading this blog.

Seriously, YouTube might as well be renamed "ULTIMATE PROCRASTINATION MACHINE."  Or something slightly catchier to that effect.

Since I "discovered" Dan and Phil (had them waved in my face by my best friend until I succumbed - thank you Lyds!), I have lost literally hours of my life when I should have been writing, but have instead preferred to watch two stupidly attractive dudes with amazing hair play The Sims 4.  Phil Lester is now my number one crush and I know a scary amount of random facts about two blokes I've never met.  In case you're wondering where the above gif comes from, it's from this video, which I watched in bed last night and laughed so much I had a coughing fit.

And it's not just Dan and Phil (well, roughly 75% of my YouTube time is taken up by them, but other stuff is available).  One of my favourite time wasting activities is YouTube karaoke.  You type in a song title, add the word "karaoke" on the end, find a backing track and sing your heart out like the frustrated diva you are.  What's not to love?!

My other top YouTube recommendation is definitely "Honest Trailers."  I could sit and watch these for literally hours at a time.  In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, it does exactly what it says on the tin: they're movie given a more honest trailer and they are hilarious.  Given that I'm obsessed with Les Miserables, it's no surprise that one of my favourite trailers they've done is for the movie version, which you can watch here.

Add to the above delights the fact that you can find all kinds of documentaries, music videos, old TV shows and assorted oddities and it's no wonder that YouTube is my number one time wasting activity, possibly of all time.

2. Social Media

I moan about Facebook.  I moan about Twitter.  I moan about Tumblr.  Would I be without any of them?  No, no and thrice no.

Social media is a marvellous way to lose an hour or three of your life.  You pop onto Twitter just to "see what's happening," you notice an unusual hashtag, you get involved... Next thing you know, it's dark outside and you haven't eaten since breakfast.

Besides which, social media doesn't have to be a total waste of your time (the fact that I follow several "puppy gif" Tumblr accounts is beside the point - they are SERIOUS BUSINESS).  Can anyone else remember how we as a nation reacted in unison to major world events before the introduction of Twitter?!  Twitter is the first place I head when anything happens, these days.  Sometimes, that strange bonding-effect of feeling as though you and a whole heap of strangers have joined together to discuss some big news event can actually inspire me to write something on the subject.  So, checking Twitter roughly eight million times a day is a totally productive use of my time, thank you very much.

3. My Best Friend

She's my number one time waster, obvs.  And never actually time wasted.

My bestie is pretty much the ultimate way I procrastinate.  Can't think of something interesting to blog about?  I text Lydia.  Seen a new video that has only served to deepen my aforementioned crush on a YouTuber?  I text Lydia.  

And, given that we're on the same, very strange wavelength, many times, our perfectly normal conversations quickly end up turning into something entirely off the wall.  Today, for example, we decided that our new greeting for one another should be to pretend to whack each other in the face with our imaginary penises.  

Luckily, I try surround myself with people who are weird as I am, meaning that I can do this form of procrastination with a couple of my other friends, too.  If I'm in a strange mood, I'll send one of them a random text and simply enjoy the bizarre conversation it leads to.  Procrastination's more fun when you're dragging someone else away from stuff they should be doing, too.

4. Google image search

I will often sit down to write a blog and immediately begin wandering off at a tangent, as I try to decide on which pictures or gifs I should include.  A perfectly innocent trip to Google, to find a picture that relates to whatever I'm writing about, can often lead to half an hour of sifting through images of animals that look like famous people, for example.  As a case in point, I think the dog above looks like Bjorn from ABBA and I will not be persuaded otherwise.

Since I started using more and more gifs on this blog, my time spent on Google has only increased further.  I dread to think how much space on my laptop is taken up by gifs, but I would hazard a guess that if you lay them end to end, they'd circle the world at least twice.  And now that I've finally learned how to make them myself, the problem has only worsened.  I have an addiction.

AN ADDICTION, I TELL YOU.

5. Games on my iPhone

I recently discovered that you can download classic Sonic The Hedgehog to your iPhone (I'm sure it's been available for ages, I'm just notoriously slow to catch on).  I've also recently discovered that I'm terrible at it.  I'm sure I never used to be - in fact, I remember kicking ass at it on my sister's old Sega Game Gear, but apparently as a 33 year old whose thumbs have been ruined by smartphones, I suck.  This knowledge, of course, only serves to make me more determined to improve and that can only be achieved by playing it for far too long, when I'm meant to be doing more important things.

Angry Birds is still a massive addiction of mine, too.  I have a strange compulsion to not move past a level until I have a 3* rating on it, which means my eyes are pretty much square from all the furious screen-staring I've done over the years.  

Add to that a rather more sedate love of playing Solitaire on my phone and you'll surely see why I get so little done.  And why I am destined to have arthritic hands and blindness in my later years.

So, what are your top time-wasters?  Let me know.  And then you'll know why there's been a long time between blog updates...

Nothing To Say...

The trouble with blog-writing, is that once you commit to it, you're supposed to keep it up.  Regular little updates are expected, on anything from the biggest news stories of the day, to simply what you had for dinner last night (a very nice roast, if you're interested, which I'm sure you're not).  And sometimes, no matter how hard you try, inspiration just doesn't come.  From anywhere.  So, you find yourself sitting in front of your laptop, desperately hammering the keys, in the hope that you can write about something - anything - before eventually slumping onto the keyboard, in a state of silent panic that you've actually lost the ability to write at all.

The funny thing is, I've not run out of subjects.  It's just that it sometimes feels as though I've covered everything I want to say at that very moment, already.  Following her despicable piece about wanting to drown (or shoot) migrants this weekend, I was tempted to blog about Katie Hopkins, but... Well, I've done that already.  Then I thought about writing a piece on the awful abuse Sue Perkins received, after being (apparently wrongly) labelled as Jeremy Clarkson's successor on Top Gear, but I remembered that it was only last month that I wrote about Jeremy Clarkson and I've already written about online abuse, as recently as February.  In fact, I wrote about it twice.

It's not like I shy away from personal topics, either.  This might be a public blog, but I'm not averse to writing about some of the most deeply personal issues in my life, such as my experiences of emotional abuse and my sadness at not having become a mum, yet (and my worry that, seeing as I'm 32 and single, I may never do so).

But today, I just can't seem to find the right words, let alone the right subject, hence the inclusion of what I can only call a "greatest hits" list of links, above, in the hope that someone stumbling upon this blog for the first time might actually realise that I can write a coherent post, now and then.  Today just isn't the day...

Random photo, for no reason.

There are probably several reasons for my lack of brain-function when it comes to writing, today.  Firstly, I'm massively overtired.  I went to see (and MEET - still not over that!) McBusted on Friday 10th April and after that excitement, I only really had a day or so to chill out before I went off to sunny Butlin's in Minehead from Monday-Friday of last week.  Cue many late nights, probably too much alcohol and noisy neighbours who woke us up at all hours with their loud chatter, television watching and... Other stuff I won't mention.  The day after I returned home, I also went to a wedding and stayed up late after the reception, so basically: Zzzzzzzzz.

My mind is also not my closest friend at the moment, seeing as it's bombarding me with images of some poor guy I barely know, who I have quite a crush on.  I don't think I've ever said more than a passing "hello" to him, which is why said crush is so silly, not to mention the fact that he lives and works a good three hours' away.  I'm not put off by long-distance relationships, but I'm sure he's probably put off by the thought of some soppy mare who can't even bring herself to make eye contact when she's in the same room as he is...  So my conscious brain and I aren't exactly on speaking terms. 

Anyway, I sat down at my laptop, with the absolute intention of writing something decent.  And then I was distracted by YouTube.  And then by a site on which I ended up designing a birthday gift for my best friend.  And then by a local property website (because damn it, if I win the lottery one of these days, I need to know what's out there...). Procrastination is truly the greatest skill of any writer.  We might be able to put words into semi-entertaining sentences now and then, but our true talent lies in our ability to avoid doing so at all costs, on days like these.

So, my humble apologies for wasting the last few minutes of your life with this utter drivel.  But I thought it might be interesting to leave a post up online that reminds both me and my readers (if I still have any, after this...) that sometimes, we have nothing to say.  And that's okay.