Ah sweet work avoidance... It is truly amazing what this heady blend of paranoia, procrastination and apathy churns up. Things that normally would never seem important or worth doing become the sole reason for existence - in a vain attempt to kid yourself that they are more important than the work which is being avoided.
For example. Cooking. I rather like cooking, even in the most work-free of times. Admittedly my urge to cook is often tempered by my urge to laze around, resulting in yet another dish of pasta and sauce. But give me an imminent deadline and the complexity of dishes increases exponentially: cakes, stews, roasts spew from my creating fingertips like thunderbolts from the fists of Zeus. I am elevated to the status of culinary deity, or, at least, aspire to those heights.
Of course, a culinary deity never got a first class degree, a project in on time, or met any of his essay deadlines. But this inescapable fact somehow eludes the hardcore procrastinator.
Other frequently employed methods of avoiding work include developing a sudden love of bad daytime TV, and having to watch every episode; realising that your life's ambition was in fact to learn Welsh, or that the stuffed toy cat on your shelf is in fact the Dark Lord Mittens and must be worshipped through a complex and twisted web of fan sites and other propaganda. Or even joining an online ideas database. Goddamnit.