A little bit of smoke has cleared....

Well, well. I decided to take a few moments away from studying for my finals to do a blog search for blogs related to my intentions. I came across three, and, once I have more time, I will go through them more thoroughly. I basically just read enough to ensure they did not contain content unrelated to information I seek, but I still need to refine my search and really seek out what it is I am looking for from them. They are:

http://www.pw.org/

http://www.namw.org/

http://www.placesforwriters.com/

Now, the fact that I have not allowed myself enough time to go through these blogs/websites makes me realize that I may be self-handicapping. We, as humans, self-handicap constantly, some people do so more than others. The definition from one of my psychology books, "Social Psychology", states that self handicapping are: "Behaviors designed to sabotage one's own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure" (p. 77).

Self-handicapping is essentially the practice of making up excuses, performing actions and displaying behaviors that would otherwise offer a readily available explanation to why one did not do as well as they thought they would. In class, one of the examples given was the student who refuses to study for a class, and then ends up getting a bad grade. Well, he self-handicapped by not studying. A better, more calculated example would be when someone is going to write a story, or a paper, and insists to her reader that it is "not that great, anyway," or that she, "rushed into writing it, so who knows what others will think." By setting up this attitude for the reader, the writer is protecting herself from feeling like a failure in the event the story is rubbish. On the other hand, self-handicapping can work to her benefit because if the story is phenomenal, she will be praised for creating something so effortlessly. The catch is usually that the person did in fact work hard, but reported not, just to avoid any discomfort that may arise or in order to prevent any damage to one's self esteem. I could come up with many other reasons, but I won't. basically self-handicapping=excused behavior. It is a way to "lower expectations" (p. 78).

The whole point of this rant is that I am self-handicapping right now, and I know it. I could take the time to go through these websites, but I was searching for them while I was taking a break from studying, so I did not really have the time to find out more information that could, and probably would, benefit my writing career. In addition, instead of taking fifteen minutes to blog about it, I could have been going through the websites.... And why not do it now? Well, I have to go and exercise. Tonight we are going to a show, and I only have so much time before I have to get all gussied up for the show! Fortunately, I am trading one evil self-handicapping for another: I used to come up with any excuse not to exercise, but now I often use exercising as my self-handicap excuse. I don't want to mess up my routine now, and I am trying to stick with it the best I can.....

Off to exercise.... No time to write....