Procrastination is Completely Reasonable

I knew from a very early age that I was a procrastinator. I knew this because my mother said, “You’re a procrastinator.”  My eyes probably started darting around the room at that moment, hoping to get a hint from somewhere what the hell a ‘Procrastinator’ was.  “Look it up in the dictionary.  Now.” (meaning I couldn’t put it off for a less busy moment, I guess).  I was hoping it would be a good thing but I had my suspicions that it wasn’t; my older sister was the usual recipient of random compliments, not me.  I was the one everyone looked at when someone said, “Who did that?!”

 I fiddled through the pages of the dictionary until I found it, or at least what I hoped was it because how in the hell do you spell ‘procrastinate’?  It said:

“….to postpone doing something, especially as a regular practice; put off until tomorrow”

Postpone? What the hell does that mean?  “Look it up.  Now.”  Mom said on the exhalation of a deep breath.  She always seemed so tired when we had these conversations.  It said:

“to put something off until a later time or date, to treat something with less importance”

Well, that sounded reasonable. I wasn’t sure what the issue was.  There were many things that could be put off to another time.  Quite a lot of things, in fact.  Apparently, Mom wasn’t interested in a 7 year old that prioritizes.  Especially when my priorities were different than her priorities.

I’d like to say that I eventually overcame my procrastinating tendencies but that would be untrue. It’s one of those things in life that is a conundrum…..I always intended to address my procrastination gene but I never got around to it.

The problem with procrastination is that it’s so reasonable. “Damn!  I forgot to call Mom & Dad!”  I don’t want to call now because then I would be rushed and they would pick up on my rush-ed-ness and think they aren’t important and there would be hurt feelings and inferiority complexes and I’ll just call them tomorrow at a better time.

I need to get these invoices entered into the books but I have to start supper right away so I’ll just play a couple games of Solitaire and do the invoices tomorrow.

I need to pay these bills but I also need to get to the store so, I’ll do the bills later because I don’t want to starve The Viking. Vikings can get ‘hangry’ sometimes and I just want to manage that situation before it develops.

That pile of laundry is getting pretty high. I should probably do that except it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I’ll just end up forgetting the stuff in the washing machine and it will get all stinky so I’ll have to wash it again and no one wants to waste water and energy, now do they?  I’ll just start it first thing in the morning.

I should really go chop up those vegetables for supper….as soon as I win a game of solitaire.

See?  It’s all so reasonable. No one can fault my thought processes.  So it’s less about procrastinating and more about Time Management and how tasks just don’t line up time-wise except in fairy tales.  This is the real world though and I can’t magically get all the laundry done before I have to make supper because I just finished entering invoices.  I can’t fit a nice phone call into that half hour before I go for my nail appointment and the store because I just spent all morning paying bills and writing a new post.  And I suppose I could get those vegetables cut up right now but I’ve just worked very hard folding laundry.  I’m not Cinderella after all and everyone deserves a break now and then.

I’m really the victim here, at the mercy of time itself.  To be honest, I think it’s the fault of progress.  We have just enough technology to make things awkward, timing-wise.  If we had a dishwasher that loaded itself I would have way more time to talk to my parents.  If clothes and linens cleaned themselves those invoices would be entered before they were even created.  If food just appeared in the fridge I could pay those bills the moment I saw them and still have time to win a game of solitaire.

Why isn’t anyone working on this?  Honestly!  Do I have to do everything myself?