A Nasty Case of the Shoulds

"Should" is quite possibly my least favorite word in the English language. My reaction to it is very Yoda. Do or do not, there is no should.

I'm heading home for the holidays in less than two days, and my ability to accomplish anything, writing-wise, evaporates the moment I step foot off that plane. For three-plus weeks, I will be basking in the glow of family & the holidays (while still putting in my usual 40 at the day job). I love this time of year, but my writing always stalls due to a complete lack of free time. In anticipation of this dearth o' writing, I thought I'd work extra hard this week and get ahead. (Guess how that worked out? Ha ha.)

I have been motivationally challenged all week long. I know I should be doing much-needed revisions on The Ghost Exterminator. I should be fixing the crappy ending on my little shifter novella. Barring that, I should be pepping up the dry prose of my Karmic short story, or maybe logging a few thousand words on my new WIP.

I should be doing any one of a dozen productive tasks, but what am I doing? A big fat nothing. My brain seems to have decided that my annual creative vacation has begun early. I sit here, kicking myself for all the things I'm not accomplishing, but I still can't seem to get my brain in gear.

So how do you kick a case of the shoulds?