Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Truth About Cat Vacuuming

In the coming months, when more everyone starts logging their hours, you may see the phrase 'cat vacuuming' pop up.


Cat Vacuuming means to vacuum your cat in a sarcastic procrastinating way. Not literally. That's cruel.

You know that feeling that today you've got to make yourself write. You've got to do it and you're going to give yourself another fifteen minutes before your chain yourself to that desk and do it. Then, much too soon, your fifteen minutes are up. Instead of being a good girl and sitting down and writing, you are going to pick some stupid, menial task that you HAVE to do first. Like cleaning your room. Cat vacuuming is supposed to colorfully illustrate the extent to which you go to so you don't have to make yourself write. Like picking up individual pet hairs. Then deciding to vacuum them off your cat because you've cleaned them up everywhere else and you've got to find SOMETHING to clean instead of sitting down and writing. 



The Inkblots have also extended the meaning of Cat Vacuuming to include that nasty bit of unfocused writing that we're all guilty of. When you're writing along and you write a great paragraph. You read over your great paragraph and think 'wow, great job.' Then you hop on Facebook for no apparent reason. Ugh, you say. You turn off your browser, write a sentence, open it again twenty seconds later and watch a music video. This continues at an alarming rate till you find yourself reading a stranger's Twitter updates and think to yourself 'I should be writing.' 



This sort of poor self discipline is unproductive, bad for cats, and causing you more problems than you think it is. Half of writing is getting yourself to sit down and write AND STAY THERE. 


So even though there might be some literary merit in looking this up when you're supposed to be writing,

                                 

it's really just going to kill your stream of though and rob you of four brilliant paragraphs. Yes I know, they seem very sweet, but they just want to make you vacuum your cat. Flee. Fast. Cats and writers everywhere beg of you. 

~Sarah

1 comment:

Rachel Kimberly said...

This is a great post and a convicting reminder... Haha. Cat vacuuming... hee hee.