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I am writing this on Tuesday, and it's not technically due until Friday.
Someone call Rome; this qualifies as a miracle.
I am a Procrastinator, with a capital P. My mother tells me I take after my grandmother, which is fitting considering she is the No. 1 reason I became a writer (that, and the fact that I know the difference between its and it's.)
The life of a Procrastinator is blissfully smooth sailing until a deadline nears, and then it's stormy weather. The severity of the storm is directly related to both the length of time spent procrastinating and the importance of the task that has been procrastinated.
For example, a typical thunderstorm is when I crash and bang around gathering up the garbage as the truck trundles up my street. A hurricane is when I allow a deadline to ruin my life temporarily: My health suffers, I miss out on family time, and I am just a miserable wretch.
It's not that I am lazy. It's not that I don't care. These are common misconceptions about Procrastinators. I work hard, and I care a lot. The true culprits are Busyness and Optimism.
When you work hard and care about stuff, you tend to be busy. When I play the "too busy" card, it sounds like this: Why waste time cleaning that room when the clutter simply disappears when I shut the door?
Usually, I am tending to a lot of immediate needs at the same time -- an intangible form of clutter --which means I live my life in triage. The important stuff that takes longer to accomplish or doesn't have to be done right now gets put off, and put off, and put off. Tasks in this category range from mending clothes to retirement planning.
When optimism is to blame, it's because of its counterpart, wishful thinking, which sometimes masquerades as flat-out delusion: I don't need to get gas now, the pointer thingy is only at the beginning of the red zone -- I have at least two gallons left! Or, I don't need to get that leak fixed now, it probably will go away on its own. (My husband is not an optimist and finds my pie-in-the-sky delusions exasperating.)
As I said in last week's column, life happens, and all our good intentions get swept away in the flood of daily responsibilities -- namely keeping myself and my family alive and relatively happy.
However, I do wonder how much safer, healthier and happier my family would be if I, say, made sure to get my oil changed on time, or cleaned out that room to be used as a space to create art and music, or mopped the menacingly germy kitchen floor? I regret when my procrastinating affects other people -- my daughter, for example. She either has learned it from me or has inherited the procrastination gene. When I give her chores to do "by the time I get home," she waits till she hears my key in the lock before hopping to it.
She spent an entire week of snow days goofing off only for me to find out on Sunday she had a four-page science research paper due Monday.
The glimmer of hope is that she gets up on her own in the mornings, packs her own lunch and is ready to go at least 30 minutes before it's time to leave.
I'm not sure there's hope for me. It is now Friday evening, and I am just finishing this column.
Call the pope. Cancel the miracle. It was just wishful thinking.
Betsy Bethel is the Life editor and editor of OV Parent magazine. She can be reached at bbethel@theintelligencer.net.