proluctance – n. the paradoxical urge to avoid doing something you’ve been looking forward to – opening a decisive letter, meeting up with a friend who’s finally back in town, reading a new book from your favorite author – perpetually waiting around for the right state of mind, stretching out the bliss of anticipation as long as you can.
Sometimes the anticipation of something, good or bad, is more impactful than the thing. I certainly can understand not wanting to take a call or open a letter because the result might not be positive, or what I wanted.
The one place I certainly see this is with books. I have a few authors that I just buy their new books, often pre-ordering them. Lee Child is one and I often pre-order his books weeks or months in advance. However, when they come, I don’t always start reading them.
Sometimes I might be in the middle of something else, but quite a few times I’ve saved the book for my next long flight. I tend to take a 4+ (or often 8+) hour flight every quarter, so I’ve saved a few books until I knew I’d be stuck in a seat. In fact, the latest one, The Secret, was one of those. It came in late Oct 2023, and I knew I had a few trips scheduled in the next few weeks, so I delayed reading this until I was headed to the PASS Summit in November.
To help build my own anticipation and feed my proluctance, I re-read a couple of his older books in the meantime 
From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows