I promise I’ll get to it
– eventually
I meant to write my column yesterday, really and truly I
did.
Instead, I cleaned out my purse.
Last week, I meant to do my taxes.
Instead, I dug up the garden in preparation for a major
renovation.
I promise I’ll get to it – eventually
I meant to write my column yesterday, really and truly I did.
Instead, I cleaned out my purse.
Last week, I meant to do my taxes.
Instead, I dug up the garden in preparation for a major renovation.
There’s nothing like something you don’t want to do to give you the energy to do something entirely different.
I wasn’t always a procrastinator. Long ago, I was the very model of efficiency, doing what I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it. I think I was in college then.
Even as a young person about town, working a series of low-paying reporter jobs, I did not procrastinate too much.
But then I got married, and when the kids came along – well, for some reason, it became much easier to shuffle off the unpleasant chores until another day.
And let’s face it, life got busy. There were many more distractions than there were before.
And I took advantage of every single one of them.
My motto became “Always put off until tomorrow what you should be doing today.”
Procrastination can be a fine art, if you do it right.
Not long after Son No. 1 was born (18 years ago), I had some old dear friends drop in on me unexpectedly one afternoon.
Of course, I was not ready for prime time at this point, covered in baby spit, sleep deprived and leaking milk. But still, I bade them come in.
It was only after we had made ourselves comfortable in the living room that I realized I hadn’t vacuumed recently in there.
In fact, I hadn’t done so since the baby was born four weeks prior.
I confessed my sins to my friend, who luckily had a baby of her own and understood perfectly.
“You have better things to do right now than vacuum,” she said graciously.
She had a point, and I took it to heart. Maybe too much so.
Now I am ready, willing and able to drop just about anything, especially if there is something else to do. And especially if it involves my children.
Heck, I’ll even put things off to do something with other people’s children.
It’s much more fun than all the boring grownup stuff I have to do.
Don’t worry, it all gets done eventually. It has to. Not even I feel like taking on the IRS by myself.
So the taxes do get done before April 15. And now the column is getting done. They’re just getting done at kind of odd hours. (I am writing these words at 6 a.m.)
Having children gives me a perfect excuse to procrastinate. It is generally more fun to hang out with the boys during the times when they’re around. And let’s face it, as they get older, those times get considerably fewer.
My 18-year-old visited over the holiday weekend. So I procrastinated. I put off doing the dishes so we could all go to the mall. And I put off paying bills so that we could have a movie night together.
Of course, sometimes I procrastinate purely for me. Like the cleaning-out-the-purse thing. It just seemed like what I needed to do at the time.
Procrastination is such a negative word, though.
Maybe it would sound better if I explained it as “rearranging my priorities.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
