Administrative Notes 8/2/2015

One purpose of this blog was to write down my thoughts about the process of writing it in the hope that this might in some way be useful either to readers of this blog or possibly to those of you who are considering writing one yourself.

Mostly this blog is accomplishing what it was intended to accomplish even though nothing is really finished yet, there has been good progress in a variety of areas. It was not a total surprise how long it takes to write a good post that has some substance to it. It was a surprise however to see how many drafts never see the light of day and are generally rewritten at a later time.

What has been surprising to me is how I have taken to writing this blog as a form of positive procrastination, more positive than many other things I could be spending my time on.  As I type this, I have unfinished posts on our performance character animation at Siggraph in 1988, a post on the recent Marlon Brando documentary, a post on design ideas for a house, a post on what we do know about the Southern Reach trilogy by Vandermeer, a post on using techniques from Nostradamus to write a genre of entertainment fiction, and several other besides.

But right now I am a week away from Siggraph and I am way behind on things that need to get done now, and by the end of the year. I have to focus and that has often been a problem for me. Thus it turns out that at various times writing for this blog has become an activity I can do to avoid doing things that are more time critical.

This further supports the idea that when someone is sincere about procrastination that he or she will find a way to procrastinate in spite of the obstacles. There is always a way to avoid doing what really needs to be done if you put your mind to it.