A seismologist's life ...

Setting the scene

The first entry in any blog is always a little bizarre. Nothing has been said before, no-one knows what the author is about, there is a bit of the blank page syndrome at work...

The scene is thus: a desk, a computer, a view out over the roof-tops of the university campus. An open door, noise in the corridor outside. On my desk: my notes for tomorrow's lecture, my other computer (a laptop - so I can work on the go...), my keys, my mid-afternoon banana and my ToDo list.

It's the ToDo list which has driven me to procrastinate: I have a paper to write and only two more weeks in which to get it done. Of course I also have many other duties, my students, my lab equipment, urgent requests from colleagues, the latest earthquake that needs checking out... somehow or other the paper always gets left at the bottom of the priority pile, as if I have been avoiding it.
And now that it is getting urgent that I stop pushing it aside, I feel a great resistance to attacking it, as if my involuntary procrastination has made a mountain out of the small pile of crumpled up drafts...

I know, I know: just get to it, right? Easier said than done, but here goes anyway