How to not procrastinate

"So, Philippines, how's Africa going?" David, my Africa mentor enquired for not the first time. And not for the first time my stomach lurched uncomfortably as I confessed that actually I had my head firmly in the sand and had done nothing about it. David had taken it upon himself a year or two ago to keep me accountable to my decision to go out to Africa to work for a while. The original plan had been to go out for a year or so to work but as I started thinking about this I discovered I wasn't really ready or motivated enough to do the amount of uprooting necessary to get myself, on a long term basis, out of Edinburgh.

However I am extremely grateful that I was not allowed to let it go and in the end decided that I would go on a shorter trip. I booked the time off work back in August and set about making arrangements through an organization that had interviewed me and promised to help. After much impatient waiting I received a contact from them in November for a hospital in Tanzania.

Then they pulled out of the proceedings leaving me to organize things independently. Having found out through independent agencies what was required, I e mailed the Tanzanian hospital to request they filled out the required forms. And I waited. Several e mails and a few months later they e mailed to tell me I had left things too late and they would not be able to accept me :o(

Hence a trip several years in the 'looking forward to' has now been planned from start to finish in the space of a month! This is, after all, the year for not procrastinating as I proclaimed to anyone who would listen when I made my resolutions at New Year, hoping that some accountability to my friends might spur me on.

Now, on the whole I like to know what is going on in internet society without getting my nose too wet by offering my mood or food preferences or any current 'status' other than to unwittingly advertise when I am on line. I am also quite disinclined to regale an indifferent world with my daily trivialities. And  to that end I had firmly intended to remain strictly a pew warmer in the goings on of blogs and social websites.

However, with a trip to Ghana looming, the poor recipients of my mass e mailing may find themselves wishing that all this (possibly interesting but personally irrelevant) information were stored somewhere handy that they could read at their leisure and not trip over in their in boxes. So here is Flip'in Africa: a phrase that in fact I hope not to feel the urge to use too often. I will do my best to update it when there is stuff to update it with, and to make sure it does not outstay it's welcome - in my life, let alone yours.