By Josh Hornbeck

My roommate doesn’t do his dishes.  And it isn’t just a plate and a fork here or a bowl and a cup there.  No.  The sink is perpetually littered with his dishes and his dishes alone.  Six or seven bowls he used for maybe two meals.  Five glasses stacked up over just two days.  It’s a veritable explosion of ceramics and silverware.  I try to strain my pasta, but with no free space in the sink to place the strainer I, by necessity, hold the strainer in one hand the steaming pot of boiling water in the other – a recipe for pain and suffering – and find myself with second degree burns up and down my arm.  If I want to fill up my Brita water-pitcher, I have to hold it at a right angle to the faucet or risk breaking one of my dishes that my roommate has decided to appropriate into his cooking extravaganzas.

I, of course, have yet to voice my frustration.  I know most people wouldn’t stand for it.  Most roommates set very clear boundaries and ground-rules for living at peace with one another.  But I have a problem with confrontation.  I hate making waves.  So I do everything I can to show my displeasure without actually saying – simply, honestly – “Aaron, do your dishes.”  So I let his dishes pile up in the sink and fastidiously wash my own the moment I use them.  My steaming bowl of pasta sits on the counter while I scrub the pot and scour the strainer.  I refuse to allow my plates even a moment’s respite in hopes of shaming my roommate into culinary cleanliness.  But it doesn’t change anything.  His dishes remain undone.

As much as I want to scream at him and throw his dishes across the room, I can’t.  While on the one hand it would probably relieve a portion of my frustration and hostility; on the other it would leave me with gaping holes in my tableware.  But more to the point, I know why he leaves them undone for such long stretches of time.  As much as I want to condemn and vilify his procrastinatory impulses, I can’t.  I understand them all too well.

Here’s how it goes: Aaron arrives home from work and, tired and hungry, cooks his spaghetti and meatballs, his mixed vegetables and French fries.  Utilizing all the necessary pots and pans for his gastronomic endeavors, he adds a few plates and bowls to complete the menagerie and plops himself down in front of the television to watch C-SPAN or BookTV.  After an hour or so, the adrenaline of the day has subsided so that he can barely transport his plates (notice the plural) from the living room to deposit them in the sink.  The momentum which carried him through work to the preparation of a veritable feast has fully dissipated, leaving him with the desire to do nothing more than tuck himself into bed.  He always hopes to get to his neglected chores at some point the next day, but he inevitably wakes up with just enough time to throw on some pants and a sweater and head out the door to work.  Thus, the infernal cycle is repeated over and over again throughout the week.  Each day the dishes remain unattended the more insurmountable the task becomes.  Even though doing his dishes right away would have only taken him a few minutes, he deferred the task and each day he puts it off just means it will take him that much longer to finish.

The truth is – as infuriating as my roommate’s slovenly habits may be – we’re more alike than I’d care to admit.  While I may not procrastinate when it comes to washing the dishes or cleaning the apartment, I find myself putting off activity time and time again in a multitude of other arenas.  I constantly avoid making and returning business calls (mainly because I hate the phone), I refuse to return emails and set up meetings, and – most damningly – I don’t even touch my writing most days.

I’m okay when it comes to writing for a specific purpose with a specific deadline.  All of the plays I’ve written for work have been finished on time, ready to go by the first day of rehearsal.  Granted, I normally wait until the last minute to start writing, which means I’m frantically typing for twenty-four straight hours until I finally reach the “The End.”  But I still get it done.  And I get it done on time.  Even if I am half asleep while my actors are reading through it for the first time.

The real problem comes with all of the personal writing I need to be doing.  I have a slew of stories I want to write and finish and send out.  But without a firm deadline, I keep putting them off, thinking I’ll start on them tomorrow.  So I watch some TV, do a little reading, and go to sleep.  The next day dawns, full of good intentions, but by the time I wake up, check my email, eat breakfast and get moving; the day’s already half over.  I psych myself out and, believing I don’t have enough time to get any substantial work done, I just sit on the couch, watch some TV, and the cycle repeats over and over again.

If it was just the stories I was writing, I think I might be able to work up the gumption to get back into them from time to time (although, now that I think about it, that’s probably not true – I’ll always find some reason to put off my work).  But in trying to produce a newsletter every other week, film reviews and essays keep building up and remain empty files sitting on my desktop, taunting me day in and day out.  And every time I see a movie or watch television, I create a word document for a review that will never be written.

These reviews and stories and essays and playscripts hang over my head, the very knowledge of their existence oppressive.  Whenever I sit down at my computer, ready to start working, eager to get back into the writing I’ve put off for so long, all I can think about is the sheer volume of pieces I’ve left undone.  I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t know how to begin.  There are so many pieces I haven’t started.  Do I start with the film reviews?  Do I start with the stories?  And if so, which stories?  And so, overwhelmed, I just turn off my computer and turn on my TV.

I know that really isn’t helpful when it comes to feeling overwhelmed.  After all, I just keep putting off the pieces I have to write and they just keep piling up and I keep feeling more and more behind.  But it’s hard to break out of those patterns, isn’t it?  When you look at the heap of dishes waiting to be cleaned, the multitude of piece unwritten, it just seems so daunting and insurmountable.  But Aaron still has to get the dishes done.  And if I really want to be serious about my writing, I have to sit down and write.