Coping Methods for Deadlines - My week in gifs

This week I'm afraid I'm rather lacking in nuggets of wisdom - stop laughing - my brain is locked into a battle with my final essay deadline (Thursday HOLY SHIT) so as I'm writing this I'm actively procrastinating it further which does wonderful things for my stress levels. Due to the mushy state of my noggin I thought I'd talk you through some of my less-than recommended methods for dealing with deadline stress - in gif form! I'd like to say that I haven't done all of these things but I'm an awful specimen of humanity with self-control issues.

Ways to deal with Deadline Stress
1. Sleep far, far, more than is healthy

Deadlines can't bother you if you're unconscious! Sleeping in until 10am for five days straight however will start to have a detrimental effect on your sanity. Setting four alarms does absolutely nothing, you can switch them off on autopilot and fall straight back to sleep. But still it beats working on your essay.


2. Develop incredibly poor eating habits.

When left to my own devices I will swing wildly between forgetting to eat anything for 12hrs and going to great lengths to acquire enough food to feed four...then eat it all myself. In the past week I have munched through a shameful quantity of tortilla chips & salsa in lieu of real meals. Also avocado toast becomes the pinnacle of my existence.

3. Have stupidly long showers

Or baths if you happen to have one. When my brain doesn't want to engage with anything, going and spending half an hour in the shower is a wonderful way to dissociate entirely from reality. More recently I've been using the time to sneak in more time singing along to Hamilton so I hope that my neighbour hasn't overheard me too often.

4. Binge Youtube Videos

Whatever your niche there's gonna be some channel that you suddenly find a reason to start mainlining like it's going out of style. I went for trying to catch up with Casey Niestat's channel since everyone & their mother has been raving about his daily vlogs. They're right you know, they're incredible.

5. Read all the books

I don't know if other people do this but when I am meant to be focusing on writing a literature essay discussing set books, suddenly the only thing I want to do is read ANY OTHER BOOK. This month I have tore through an embarrassing quantity of books when I should have been prepping & planning this essay. Why even after I've finished this post I plan to read another book, FIGHT ME!


6. Write a novel

Not a whole one obviously. But I have definitely spent more time than is seemly in the last week thinking about my novel WIP and in the last two days I've scribbled about 1500 words for a chapter in the mornings when I *really* should have been working on my essay. After Thursday I will be free to work on it as much as I want *sighs wistfully*

7. Cry

While I haven't reached this stage of deadline stress quite yet I'm not ruling it out. Check back with me around 9pm and I might be a sodden mess. I might have started to scrawl on the walls with wax crayons. God knows what state I'll be in.

I really wish that this post was a joke, but you should know that it is painfully true. Don't follow my example. For heaven's sake.