oh my, my formidable foe, written itself into expression. you got me at the slumber part, Odin, and i don't even want to justify myself over it. i love the twist of events in the end:
victory resides above the clouds. i find this a powerful and motivating piece. it feels as if an army is behind me while reading it up to the last line.

Procrastination has never been one of my weaknesses, except perhaps when I was much younger, a teenager. As a writer I have always kept to a rigid discipline, writing for a given time every day. Now writing mostly poems, it may seem as though I write a poem a day, but no, I don't. Perhaps a poem almost every day. I have one file nearly 3,500 poems, so even if I haven't written a poem on a given day, I have a backlog of poems never posted here or elsewhere. I feel no compulsion to write a poem a day, only to write now when an idea comes to me worth pursuing poetically. Then I write with a vengeance and determination to get it done. No procrastination.

I see you are still creating deadlines for yourself. When I retired I was free from deadlines, but still disciplined, perhaps not as highly as you are, both meeting deadlines at work and your daily poem. That's commendable, but isn't it better to relieve ourselves of such stress as we age? Better to smell the roses, the decaying leaves of fall and the relief that getting away from the computer and deadlines just to stroll outside and listen to the birds sing clearing our minds for writing what we must because we are?

During my working life, I dreaded deadlines and turned in work early rather than rushing to the deadline, except when I was a grant proposal pusher when I did have to drive to Washington with proposals to drop at agencies and foundations at the last minute.

I have a relaxed schedule of one poem a week. Still, slight when I'm occupied with other things, I let a week or two go by without a poem and no regret. Sometimes, I write two poems ahead of time and just wait until the next week comes to post rather than posting them both in one week like this week. Holding off my Halloween poem one more week.

Finally, you made me remember my eighth grade English teacher who had us read Oedipus and her long discussion about procrastination that came out of that Greek play. A great reminder of what not doing what needs to be done "while the sun shines" can have very bad after affects.

Ron