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| photo by Jonas Nilsson Lee courtesy of unsplash.com |
When I was in seventh grade we all were assigned a social studies project about the Iroquois Nation.
I'm originally from western New York, and the Seneca were peripherally a big deal in most of my elementary and middle school social studies classes.
This project was the Big Project for the year, it would be a huge part of our grade. If I remember correctly, it consisted of 1. a diorama/model or paper and 2. a presentation to the class of the same.
And I did no work on mine until the day it was due.
Not the day before it was due, not the night before, the day of, or to be specific, the night after the day of school that it was due. Final deadline: monday, I handed it in Tuesday, having done all the work Monday night. I did none of the work before the literal time it was supposed to be handed in.
The sad thing is, I'm not bragging about this. It's probably the worst I've ever procrastinated on something -- procrastinated past the due date without starting it -- and it was not a particularly good time.
The diorama (a paper in one night? come on!) I wound up making was a pretty poor excuse, especially, as my own best friend pointed out to me when I turned it in, compared to the cathedral I'd built for our Medieval Fair projects the year before.
But to be honest, getting in trouble with my parents over it, having to do two or three week's worth of work in a single night, the contemptible product I turned over and the disgraceful grade I got for it, none of these were the worst part.
The worst part was the last two weeks or so before the project was due, when I found myself locked in a strange sort of silent battle with my lack of inclination to get going on the work.
Hey, that thing is due in a couple weeks, I remember telling myself, and I should start work on it. But I didn't. Two weeks! What I could have done with two extra weeks of time.
Instead I said I had plenty of time left, if I worked hard once I got going, or something similar, and I emotionally rolled over and went back to doing whatever I wanted to do.
This obviously went on and on, and the short version is I remember the night before it was due, Sunday night.
Having been tortured inside that whole day, that whole weekend really, with the knowledge that I couldn't really start the project without explanations to my parents of what I was working on, and when it was due, I suddenly realized that I hadn't been thinking of it for a while, hadn't been tortured with the idea of having not started it yet, for a while. This feeling washed over me that it was almost all over.
I was watching a movie in my parent's bedroom, I'm surprised I even remember this, I think it was Thunderball. It was something about the guy who'd had plastic surgery to look like the real fighter pilot, or something. And it suddenly hit me: a feeling of I did it, I really pulled it off, only not in a good way.
The realization that soon Mom would tell me it was time for bed, and I would be stuck, and would have no time left. What would I do then?
That was the worst part, realizing that I really was out of time, that I had used it all up, and what was I going to do now.
So. Why drag all this up?
We all have projects that are important to us. And we all have things that we're going to get to, but haven't got to yet.
Maybe it's refinishing the shed out back. Maybe it's going through those old photos before they fall apart. Maybe it's writing that novel that's been in the Shoeboxes of Noncommittal of your imagination for six or ten or twelve years.
Worse, there are projects that are important without being meaningful: you have to do the dishes, update your license, talk to your insurance agent, make sure your resume is up to date just in case.
These are the things that give the real zest to life when we procrastinate over them. "I'll let myself off the hook tonight, I had a lousy day. Let's just get take out and eat TV until bedtime." Lord, what a time to be alive.
But in the long run, this sort of behavior only really makes me miserable. I sit there, trying to enjoy my undeserved slacker food, and I try to pretend that it's other things that are bothering me -- the heat, not getting my way, not having just the right song to listen to in the car -- and I really know what's wrong the whole time. And I know how to fix it.
Whatever it is, do it.
I can't tell you how many times I've felt a general weight over me, and known exactly what it is, that project I need to do and haven't made time for. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, how long I've been putting it off, and now I'm a little embarrassed to even remember that it's supposed to be done.
This actually happens surprisingly often.
All I can say is, the feeling of getting things out of the way, or even starting them well, is a thousand times better than the little rush we get from indulging in what feels good for now.
I will never stop procrastinating. Procrastination is one of life's greatest pleasures. If possible, I intend to put off shuffling off this mortal coil when the time comes, not for greed or fear of dying so much as wanting to be consistent. "Die today? Eh, brush that off, it can wait until tomorrow."
But if I learned anything from when I was a kid, it's that there really is a time when it's too late, when there is no more time left to do a thing. Unfinished sheds fall to pieces in time, so do photos. And novels that aren't written never come to be anything, never get read.
Worse, ideas that aren't written fester, and moulder, and eventually die, and are not replaced. We forget that we were even able to have great ideas in the first place, or even good ones.
We forget how to feel like we are alive in the things we make. We start to think that we were never good at making things at all.
So pretty please, if no one is reading this but future me, Future Me, listen, pretty please, whatever it is you're not doing, stop reading this article and go do it.
I'll wait.
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