Procrastina…I’ll look up how to spell it later
If you follow this blog, you’ll know I’m a procrastinator. Mainly because if you follow this blog, you’ll see there are long stretches of time I don’t actually blog (though this last month was for legitimate reasons, I swear!).
The fact that I am a procrastinator is well known to me-I come from a long line of them. From my father, to my father’s father, to probably his father too, I’m assuming (we never looked up anyone past Grandpa). Growing up, my family never left on time, we left on Dad Time-which is like comparing regular years to dog years. In order to leave for a trip at 10 AM, we’d plan to leave at 6 AM, which meant we’d hit the road at 12:30. Complex mathematical formulas went into adjusting for Dad Time, resulting in a house that looked like an MIT classroom: whiteboards filled with numbers and figures doting every room.
There were various tricks we tried to break ourselves of our wait-to-the-last-minute habit. My father famously set every clock ahead by twenty minutes. In theory, he’d forget what he did, think he was late, and actually leave early. In reality my father ALWAYS remembered he set the clocks forward, and would ignore them. This resulted in him being twenty minutes late.
This also bothered the hell out of my mother, who operated on Mom Time, the same time operated on by hummingbirds and especially speedy NASCAR pit crews.
“How is it 1:30 already!?” she’d cry, throwing bags into the car with Superhuman speed. Then she’d wait for twenty minutes, as my brother and I watched TV with Dad. Needless to say, we were not on Mom Time.
In the mind of us procrastinators, we do not think of it as “procrastination.” We think of it as “creative priorities.” Sure I could do homework, I’d tell those on Mom Time, but homework stresses me out. Therefore, my priority is to play Warcraft for a minimum of three hours, so I can relax enough to do work. My brother and I had our own equations that inevitably equaled trying to write an essay at one in the morning.
Take away toys from a procrastinator plays and we’ll just find new ones. Take away those, and we’ll fiddle with our hair, decide we need an haircut, and are at the Super Cuts before you have time to blink. Its not that we’re bad at getting things done-we’re bad at getting NECESSARY things done. The yard of a procrastinator is always neat; our lockers are always spotless; we always have a an impressive To-Do list with everything crossed off but the one most important item at top.
Is i fair to censure us, though? It’s not our fault the world is filled with interesting things, and we are much more willing to watch a thunderstorm or play with a dog than, say, pay our electricity bills. History is full of famous procrastinators, like Charles Darwin, or some other people.
I say it’s time for us procrastinator’s to defend who we are! Will we chop wood in the backyard for five hours in July? Yes! Will we be doing that to avoid putting together a presentation for work? Absolutely! But, eventually, WE WILL GET IT DONE. It may be rushed, and we may not sleep for 24 hours, but it’ll be there, on your desk, on time, with us passed out on your couch.
And that’s the glory of being a procrastinator-the thrill of a job well done combined with the knowledge that next time, you can wait a leisurley SIX hours before your paper is due at midnight, as didn’t you just prove you could whip it together in four? And that’s WHO. WE. ARE.
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A rousing first entry back to blogging! Now excuse me, I’m going to leave this written on my iMac, vacuum the rug, finish a belated birthday present, take a nap that goes for a little too long, then wake up tomorrow and finally hit the POST button. Procrastinator’s unite!
Originally published at CozyJamble