bad habits

Having only "found" writing a few years ago, there's plenty of bad habits I've worked through, and even more that I still have to overcome. I suppose all writers, as all teachers, tradesmen, and others who pursue other skilled occupations never stop learning. Sometimes when I write, I fall back into bad habits, especially when I write tired. Here's a few bad habits I've broken, or am trying to break:

• overuse of commas: Comma use is often quite arbitrary, but, I, tend, to, put, too, many, in, a, sentence, disrupting, flow, and making, it, hard, to read. Where only one comma is necessary in a three clause sentence, I'll put two. Was the comma in that last sentence necessary? Your call. I still fight this one.
• K.I.S.S.: I don't have an extraordinary vocabulary, but I often found myself using words that I found to be nearly colloquial, where simpler diction would have sufficed. My second year Creative Non-Fiction prof encouraged me to keep my writing "tight". Ameliorated written discourse eventuated.
• long, drawn out sentences: Thanks in large part to the first mentioned bad habit, my sentences occasionally approach lengths reserved for anacondas, challenging shots for the best of snipers, or intercontinental highways that make sense when I write them initially, but catch even the most experienced readers unaware; unfortunate, really, but sometimes, the desire to create an intricate monstrosity in which all subjects, predicates, pronouns and antecedents find tense and quantitative agreement is too tantalizing to pass up.
• Related to the last one, my rampant use of the "aside" can be distracting. In any form of writing, it's so tempting to take a step back and give readers another perspective using one of these: "--" (or a nice set of parentheses). 
• Finally, I often neglect to proofread what I right. Spell check doesn't cache all my errors, although I find that Word 2007's grammar check is more adept at finding disagreement than previous versions. Soon, Word will improve it's spelling and grammar check to an extent that will allow me to never proofread again!. In fact, if Coke Zero can give the world real Coke taste with zero calories, why hasn't Word found a way to do that yet?

Undoubtedly, I have more bad habits, but these are the worst of the worst.

FOCUS!

It’s Monday: 11:15 in the morning. I should definitely be studying, but I can’t focus. I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD, but, regardless, its symptoms seem to rear their ugly head  from time to time. The morning's sports highlights simply couldn’t go unwatched. I simply had to check if anybody had posted anything to their blog lately. I’d checked Saturday, but thought it necessary to check every classifieds site imaginable to see if I could land Brenda a job for when she moves back down here. I’ve probably logged into Facebook three times this morning. I’ve made lacklustre attempts to open my History textbook and review my scant notes—it’s a Saturday class. Would any of you take serious notes in a Saturday class?—but I am scatterbrained right now. I’m too busy looking forward to the end to realize that a virtual climb to Everest’s peak is necessary before I reach the end; yet it seems so tantalizingly close. This is my last ditch effort at gathering my thoughts. Maybe putting everything I’m thinking at the moment “out there” will help me focus after.
I really should be freaking out. I haven’t gotten nearly enough studying done. Most of last week was written off between coaching basketball, and running the farm due to my brother’s unexpected week-long stay in the hospital. I’ve exams this Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday—the last four days of the exam period. Lame, especially when your nature is to procrastinate. At least the last one is easy. My brother is leaving for Mexico on Thursday as well, so inter-exam study time will be less than ideal. While I’m writing this, the needle on my imaginary grocery shop-like freakout scale is rapidly spinning counter-clockwise; passing the zero and going around for a second time, even.
It doesn’t help that after I’m done, I get to go up to Smithers and move Brenda back home. And it’s Christmas. Studying for finals is so much harder when there’s so much to look forward to afterwards. I guess that’s the case at the end of every semester, but this time it’s exceptional.
Alas, it’s time to give myself the proverbial self-kick in the rear—unless somebody else would like to volunteer?—and get to work. Every time I seem to pull through. I squash crunch time. I survive the pressure cooker. I take the heat; in a parka—Haha a thousand points to anyone who remembers that little inside joke. Okay it’s time to go. Or now. Yup, absolutely, now. GAH!