Right now I should be working on the rough drafts for my children's book illustrations for Bertha.  I have all the text written out on 12 pages, all I need to do is loosely pencil in the pictures using photographs Bertha provided for me, ink those pencils, upload the pages and email them to Bertha for her approval.

So why am I not doing this now?

Yes, I'm writing this blogpost to avoid work.  I don't know why; this is the work I want to do.  It's the work I've always wanted to do.  So I should just do it, right?  I will, I will!  Later.

I'm going to avoid doing a self-analysis on why I'm afraid to do what I love and just tell you I'm scared.  So I should do it scared, right?  That's what all the self-help books say:  "Feel the fear and do it anyway."  I'm doing the first half of that right now.

What just came into my mind was the tagline of some wine commercial from the past:  "We will sell no wine before its time."  That's what I'm doing:  waiting for the right time to start so I can do a good job.  I know this sounds silly, especially in this "just do it" age but waiting works for me.  It keeps my work from being my life instead of my life's work.  I need time to live:  to chat with my family, to cook, to houseclean, to talk to my neighbors, to shop, to watch digital TV now that I've gotten rid of the cable hookup I seldom watched.  In other words, time to live!

In one financial/career book I once read, the author wrote, "Your job is not your life.  Your job is what you do to have a life."  And yes, he said the dirty "j-o-b" word.  Maybe--no, definitely--this hesitance is telling me, "Get a life, Upshaw!
 

So that's what I'm going to do this evening and tomorrow, Easter Sunday:  live!  I'll go to church and thank God that Jesus rose from the dead to be our Advocate in Heaven (this is the REAL meaning of Easter).  I'll come home and make lunch, watch some TV and later head out to my parents' house for the traditional Upshaw Family holiday dinner (which involves both chicken and ham!).  

Then on Monday I'll pay bills, clean house and FINALLY get to work on those roughs.  And it's gonna feel good because it will be time.