Hesitation before practice

Do you know how it feels when you have this pile of work in front of you to practice and you can't really move yourself behind the cello? Or any instrument for that matter?

I just put the alarm for 5 am in order to get 2 hours of practicing in before bringing Janos to school and actually staying there to do 2 hours of school project for his school - and instead of being down in my basement practicing away, I am killing my time in front of the computer, answering a couple of e-mails, checking the latest sports-news (the NY Rangers won, the New Jersey Nets lost a classic game in double overtime, Bonds stays in San Francisco) and just giving it all to having to go down and start being tough on myself. Shouldn't it be fun to practice? Well, how much fun can it be to play for the 1.000.000.000th time some open strings, some finger exercises, some scales and arpeggi's?

And then the pressure of having to memorize two awfulyl hard to memorize Reger-Suites? And then this Bach-Suite which was on hold for a week while being on tour with Janos in Vancouver (no time to practice, too much homework to guide through...) - oh, this is the story of my life, trying to avoid practicing, fighting through all the resistance, threatening myself with silly threats (if you go down now, then your next concert is going to go really well, everybody will love Reger afterwards :) ) and finally either doing it or finding another excuse of something which had to be done "more urgently" - like cleaning up the place...

I know the answer: it is this constant criticizing oneself which is the killer. If we could just sit there and play away, enjoying ourselves, it would be a joy, but no, we have to constantly put into question what we just did, every practice session has to be like an audition or a competition, and we are our own worst judges. Often I come out of my basement completely exhausted and wet, as if I just played the Dvorak, Prokofiev, both Shostakovich's and at the end Schnittke No1 in a row - mentally as well as physically dead. Poor family having to live with a guy like that...