What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!

 

I ask myself this question almost daily now…  

What have I gotten myself into?!

Katherine and I made lunch plans to work on — what I had hoped would be — the finishing touches of the final version of our book. 

Yes, I’m still trying to encourage Katherine — short of chaining her to a chair — to sit still long enough for us to put this first project to bed.  She still needs to read the book through — cover to cover — and give the OK for us to move on.  We can’t move forward until she does that.

You see, Katherine — lovely person that she is — suffers from two common, modern-day diseases. 

#1:    She’s a master “multitasker” — She doesn’t focus on one thing for any length of time.  She’s involved in three or four things at a time.  She’s late for most things because she over-commits.  She tends to cancel things at the last minute... because she over-promises from the start… 

#2:    She’s also a perfectionist — She’s never satisfied with what she has accomplished.  She always wants more… always striving for more.  Projects are never “completed” because they can always be better.

How does all this affect the progress of our book?  Well, the fact that she can’t devote 30 minutes at a time, to sit down and read the book, makes it difficult for her to get through the entire book…

And when she does sit down for a couple of minutes at a time, she thinks of all the things we don’t have in the book, instead of focusing on what we have tackled in the book.  I swear that she wants this first book to capture all the answers to every question uttered by every man and woman who lived on Planet Earth… starting with Adam and Eve.

Now, mix in my impatience with her tendencies toward multitasking and perfectionism — well, let’s just say that we’re getting nowhere fast on completing the final draft of our book together.

I was really hoping that our lunch meeting would move us leaps and bounds ahead; and I was encouraged when she pulled out her laptop and started booting it up. 

But those hopes were squashed when she mentioned that, in her haste to meet me, she forgot to bring the printed manuscript that contained all her notes.  Without that printed manuscript, we couldn’t discuss her changes…but she knew she wanted to add yet another section to the book, so it would encompass even more….

As I choked down my disappointment, I agreed to work on a new section with her, because it would add to the book… but she had to promise me that this was going to be the last time!!  This adding more and more stuff had to stop at some point!!  We can’t publish the book if we never finish writing it!!

Yes, yes… she agreed.

I asked when we could get together again to pull together that new section.

Katherine:  “Well, let me think.  It’ll have to wait for a couple of weeks, because I’ve got all this other stuff to do...”


Me:  “Katherine, I don’t want another two months to go by…”


Katherine:  “I know, I know… but… I don’t have any free time…. unless…OH!  unless…”

When she outlined her plan to me, all I could think of was….

Now what have I gotten myself into?!

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