I'm a Writer – I Can Rationalize Anything

As a freelance writer, do you ever find yourself breaking the rules of the working world?  I don’t mean that you necessarily do sub-par work, mind you, just that things get done a little differently than they would if you had a boss watching over your shoulder?

For example, I just left a doctor’s appointment—one that I had scheduled during regular work hours.  When I headed back out to the car, it struck me that rather than picking up some fast-food fare and eating at my desk, I really wanted to go to this one particular restaurant.  These two events are not unrelated, by the way.  The appointment was with my OB, and the restaurant serves a spectacular broccoli-cheddar soup that I seem to be craving with some regularity during this pregnancy.

“But, I need to be responsible,” I chided myself.  “I need to get some work done.”

“Sooooooouuuup,” pregnant me responded the way a zombie would plead for brains.

“All right, all right,” I started to relent.  “Let me at least look at my schedule.”  I sat in the parking lot at the doctor’s office and fired up my laptop.

“Aha!” cried soup-deprived me.  “There’s something right there that doesn’t require Internet access.  I can sit at the table and work on that while waiting for my soooooooouuup.”

I double-checked my to-do list and made a few calculations regarding the number of hours available before I have to go relieve the babysitter in comparison with the number of hours worth of work I need to accomplish in that timeframe.  Hungry, pregnant me tried not to gloat as I realized that there was, in fact, at least one small project I could work on in the quiet restaurant.

“OK,” I conceded, “but there are two conditions.  One:  You have to order a salad, too, to make up for that basket of fried stuff you had for dinner.”

“You got it.”

“And two:  If you’re going to make writing a blog post into an excuse for eating out, you’d better at least be funny.”