Keyboard Analysis or Making Procrastination Work for You

Ever notice how dirty your keyboard can get? As an artist and creative person, mine gets especially dirty (artistic rationalization). I was just cleaning my keyboard (as I'm getting ready to have people over to the house for a party) and I noticed how utterly disgusting it looks.

Not that anyone will be hurrying in to look at my keyboard or even my art, but cleaning my keyboard is a way to rationalize not working on my book(a clever form of procrastination which, I must admit makes me disrespect myself just a little less). But getting back to keyboard hygiene, I couldn't help but notice that certain keys were dirtier than others. I couldn't help but wonder (notice how I can't help a lot of things.. especially not keeping the house clean? [but that's because I'm an artist]) but I couldn't help but think that the dirt on certain keys and functions might show some revealing pattern.

So I thought I'd share some observations I have about the dirt-patterns on my keyboard, (kind of like reading tea-leaves but really not even close). The dirtiest letter on the keyboard was the letter T. The T key would be pressed by my left index finger so … does that mean that I use T a lot or that my left index finger is dirty a lot? tttttttttttttttttt Oops, sorry I was cleaning the T key again which on the keyboard is a capital T but it came out lower case when I was cleaning it. Even after having just cleaned it, it is once AGAIN the dirtiest key just within the time I've written this. Actually it's the only dirty key, the others are still clean. Hmm, suspicious. My left index doesn't appear to be dirty. How did this happen? I just counted and I used T so far 167 times (oops now it's 170), but because I'm an artist, I don't feel like doing a comparison with the other letters to determine how many times I've used them**. I'll just deduce that the T is like a vortex for dirt.

Next observation – the Backspace key is also very dirty so I must make a lot of mistakes. I could have told you that without looking at my keyboard, in fact if you have been reading my newsletter for awhile you might think that perhaps that key should be a lot little dirtier. Next, the 9 and 0 key were very dirty.. (or maybe that's because they are also the ( and ) keys concluding that I seem to use parentheses a lot) (I think that's accurate) (What does that mean about me?) (Am I stuck between the smiley faces and frowns of the world? Aren't we all?). I'm going to go look "parentheses" up in the Wikipedia. I'll be right back.

Okay, here's the Wikipedia definition:
"An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a passage with which it has not necessarily any grammatical connexion, and from which it is usually marked off by round or square brackets, dashes, or commas."

Hey! My spell check said connexion is not spelled correctly but I cut and paste it straight from the source so I'm not responsible for THAT mistake -I'm not touching my backspace key. Anyway based on that definition perhaps I "explain or qualify" myself a lot. Maybe I'm just a little too self involved. Now I'm feeling a little down about perhaps being a little too self involved (but really not that down).
Anyway, let me tell you about my mouse. The left clicker STILL isn't clean. I spent about 45 minutes trying to get the gunk off of it and went through several layers of art and food experiences. There was even a glitter layer, a yogurt layer, a blue layer (my blue period) and a just plain gross layer (actually there were three of those). It does have a texture to it so at least my finger doesn't slip around. That's my keyboard analysis and how I get procrastination to work for me.


*rationalization number one: being an artist makes it okay to be a little less concerned with being dirty. We can tolerate messes longer than others and if we can't, we will clean just to procrastinate getting to our work.**rationalization number two: Artists can get away with being inconsistent because their rules are a little looser than non-artist types.*** reality number one: Writers can defy the procrastination monster if they use clever tactics such as self-involvement. Thanks for bearing with (me).

(c) 2006 copyright by Jill Badonsky, do not duplicate