Pro-Crastination

Guess what? Our future self is pretty unreliable, too. He/she doesn't think that the task in hand sounds like much fun, either, and he/she is just as likely to put it off as you are.

Actually, your future self is even more likely to put it off than you are because you've already established a pattern that putting off that important thing is okay.

If you want to actually succeed in life, stop relying on your future self to take care of things. Now. 

[The Simple Dollar via Lifehacker]

I had a brilliant art teacher who used to say that if procrastination were a sport almost everyone would have some kind of medal.

I'd probably have a couple of gold and silver one's by now.  But with my luck these medals would be made of tissue paper wrapped around cardboard.

There was this incredible high I used to get when completing insane projects in a very short amount of time.  In my Senior year of High school I finished a 20 page paper in 12 hours, starting from scratch.  As a result I told myself that if I could finish that gargantuan paper, I could do anything.

And I did.  Practically all of my projects were done the night before.  It kept me going until I got about 3 years in (yes I spent seven years in college, but that story is for another time).

That was when I fell from familiarity.  Within that one year a lot of prominent life events occurred which impacted my ability to do my work.  My father left my mother in October.  My dog passed away on Thanksgiving.  And my grandmother was found dead on the floor of the bathroom of her workplace on Christmas eve of that same year.  The life I knew as a child crumbled away and nothing seemed safe or worthwhile anymore.

School work lost its meaning.  The drive to finish all projects dissipated.  I began to fail.

To tell the truth I've never admitted failure before this.  I always stood at the ready and persevered.

But to fail... this was something new.

When I say fail I don't mean in school.  I mean failing in life.

Procrastination assumes that the world follows a set path, much like a game.  It assumes all variables are present and accounted for.

The problem is this assumption, the ability to take things for granted.

The problem wasn't the procrastination, it was me.  And I had to learn it the hard way.  I'd put off visiting other family members or playing with the dog for a later date because I wanted to have fun. 

I trusted my future self to do it.

Funny thing is, there is no future self.  And if there was I sure as hell wasn't a good representative for it. 

I'm still not a good representative.  But I am working on it.