Empty brain syndrome

Do you ever spend an entire day at work and get nothing done? I mean, NOTHING?

As in, you KNOW you have things to do but nobody is really breathing down your neck to get their stuff back from you so why not go trolling for more good internet stuff to read so that your bulging "blogs" folder in your bookmarks (or favorites) becomes even more bloated, so that maybe in order to see them all clearly you might need to sub-group them into subfolders of a sub-type that's more easily uber-navigable?

As in, you tell yourself to just DO something for work, but it's already almost lunchtime so why start something now when there's a chance you might leave at any moment to go grab a bite and would hate to lose you train of thought on that particular important and focus-needy item, and then after lunch you might need to go grab a coffee with someone and then talk about work or be asked to troubleshoot something for someone or maybe get asked your opinion of something or maybe it's a nice day and perhaps you can take a walk to make up for the resolutions you haven't lifted a finger to put into action?

I have a sign in my office that reads, in part, "Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains." I don't even have to LOOK at the sign to know what it says. I MADE the sign, because I am the biggest lazy-ass procrastinator in the whole world, and thought that maybe having that sign in my office right where I can see it, right next to the door I have to use lots of time every day, would make the lesson sink in (all subliminal and whatnot) and I would hop to whatever work there is to do and finish it in record time and then be able to launch into something else and be a star at work and get gobs of raises and stuff like that, but no; the sign, she is ignored as I make my way once again to the websites I love best or the coffee machine that just might work today or a coworkers office to see what they're up to and to judge how distractable they might be. I do NOT live the sign.

I work best under insane amounts of pressure, when the day simply isn't long enough to do all the things I'm supposed to be dong, and yet somehow it all gets done and all the balls are juggled and put away in their proper places. I churn out product most efficiently with a slick of cold sweat forming between my shoulderblades and a heartrate that rivals a gerbil's. If Dionysius isn't lending me his sword, then I'm wanting to kick back with Bacchus, baby.

Witness today. It's almost 11 a.m., and I've done nothing yet, really (except get up at 5:30, empty the dishwasher, wake up the kids, help with homework, take a shower, make them breakfast, check my e-mail, make their lunches, and drive them to school before coming here, then helping a coworker figure out a document problem and answer a few issue-type e-mails and provide my boss with some response items for a crabby client and waste time on the internets. Really, shouldn't there be something PRODUCTIVE in there? Something CONCRETE to which I can point?).

My really BIG problem, and here's where you feel sorry for me y'all, in my distractedness-ness, is that I have 6 more HOURS of work to put in and I've already exhausted most of my "go to" cards for non-work-type entertainments. I'm even putting up an update about my extraordinary laziness so that, once it's up, I HAVE to go get something done out of a lack of anything ELSE to do.

Except that today my brain hates me and refuses to do work. It wants candy. Or coffee. Maybe liquor too.

Isn't it lunchtime yet?