If you frequently adopt the “might as well have a cup of tea” approach to writers’ block/inefficiency/tackling an overwhelming to do list, this post has materialised from just that thought. Thus, in my case, “too much to do and half the day has vanished in a puff of dithering AKA thinking about all the things I should and could be doing without actually doing anything of note”, I have ingeniously, dare I say it, come up with an idea to both procrastinate AND create something so positive as to ensure a sense of achievement is in force by the end of the day.
By the end of this, I will have made a(nother) cup of tea, taken some photos, finished and published a post (ie this one) and be, surely, galvanised into creative action for the rest of the afternoon.
To achieve this, I will look in up to three places to discover where my box of cups and saucers were stored when we first moved into this flat two and a half years ago (joyously, they were in possible location #1) and find a pretty tea cup and saucer, I will make a pot of tea, milk will be poured from a jug rather than the milk bottle, I will find a nice plate for a biscuit (or three, it will transpire), somewhere a photo will be taken (a challenge on a grey and dreary day like this) and I will feel overall satisfaction from having thought of something to write and actually done it in an unprecedented short space of time. Off I go, 1.53 pm …
It’s 2.19 pm. I am at my desk with a tray of tea, some Fortnum & Mason biscuits (a very well received gift, dark chocolate macadamia nut biscuits), the cat on my lap (very unusual) and were you here you would definitely sense an air of smugness. Not only do I have my afternoon tea tray (why have I never embraced the concept of an afternoon tea tray before?), I washed up from lunch along with the cups and saucers, tidied the area on top of the kitchen cupboards where the box of cups and saucers was gathering dust and got the bins ready to take out.
In short, the 26 minutes I was gone from my work area were by far the most productive minutes of my day and, honestly, this is the best tea I’ve had all day.
Now to upload my photos (admittedly uninspiring, in part due to this being a cuppa for drinking hot and to make this whole scenario as realistic as it is, ie not Instagram glossed) and post this (with time for biscuit dunking, tea drinking, admiring the clink of cup on saucer and further surveying the overall splendour of my tea set-up).
I am aware this really is a first world problem, eye-rolling type post but sometimes, it seems, procrastination can be turned into something pro-active and positive. I have, after all, just written a “light” post and it wasn’t looking like I’d achieve anything tangible today. An ode to tea, perhaps.