Procrastination and the Doom of the Undone

Forestallers, Unite!

If there were an award for procrastination, I would win it. I am a champion procrastinator. And the thing is, I have a very specific way to procrastinate which allows me to masquerade as someone who is always accomplishing things. My method is this: when I don’t want to do something, I tell myself I’ll do it just as soon as I get this other thing done. And I am always able to find other things to do so that I don’t have to do the one thing. The important thing. The real thing.

I have had a stubborn knot of necessary business to take care of that I haven’t. Instead, I have made the guest room lovely and hosted friends for three days and then flipped the room for my next guest this weekend. I have hosted an 8th birthday party for Grandson the First that was a smashing success due to us buying all the food instead of trying to make it (he wanted pizza, I don’t make pizza). I have arranged and hung things in my office. I have also done my laundry and the dishes and scrubbed various surfaces and I have even dusted. But I haven’t done the actual things.

These are the things.

One, schedule a meeting with my insurance agent to discuss what to do because Providence has cancelled their Medicare bridge plans. Two , fill out a Social Security form that I’ve been avoiding, but then my friend Kathleen explained what it was and how it might even increase my benefit. Three, schedule a mammogram.

I did all those things this morning, and also paid a bill, and looked at the balance on my OTC benefit card which I must use before Providence cancels my plan, and wrote with my husband about what the heck we are going to buy with all that OTC benefit.

And now I’m sitting here glowing with the serene virtue of a woman who has stopped avoiding and started doing. It’s a familiar feeling. I was always accomplishing tasks at work. I kept long lists of what I needed to do, and checked them off accordingly. I love to check stuff off a list. I’m one of those people who will write down a few things I’ve already completed on a new to-do list, just for joy of crossing them off. But I always did a few things before I did the big thing, the difficult thing. Even when I was busy, oh so busy, I was secretly procrastinating.

It isn’t just procrastination.

In truth, part of my avoidance of life’s daily tasks had much to do with the overwhelming anxiety I have been feeling over the threatened (and completely unneeded) mobilization of the National Guard in my city. I’m not sure that threat has been ended, more like forestalled. But I feel like I can breathe today. So I’m doing. Except, I have other things to do and I am writing a frivolous blog post, which is another form of procrastination.

I told you, I am really good at this.