As I sit here at my writing desk sipping a glass of red wine at 6:05 p.m. on a Monday, looking for inspiration and staring at the blank white page that will eventually contain some 700 words for this week’s column, I have to wonder. Will I put myself to the task?
I am the student who in high school waited until the night before to study for exams—and it wasn’t because I was gifted with scorching intelligence. I readily admit that I could be a poster child for procrastination. In a former life, I’m sure I was the Greek goddess Akrasia who knew what she ought to do and didn’t do it.
I procrastinate about many things, like scrolling social media instead of getting ready for work, creating long to-do lists without following through on the to-dos, multitasking to avoid the main task, cleaning to delay the real project and so on.
However, while I do sometimes drag my feet in areas of my life, I do not do that with my desire to lead an honest living, and yet, as I have come to realize, even honesty doesn’t always pay. So it goes.
I don’t like to admit it, but author Jon Acuff has the right lightbulb on: “Procrastination is solving a problem for you. That’s what nobody says out loud. It steps in when doing the thing feels more threatening than delaying it. When the fear of finding out you’re not as capable as you believe is louder than the frustration of waiting. It’s not laziness. It’s a protection mechanism you built, and it has been working. The cost is everything you haven’t made yet.”
After working with countless people as a goals author and motivational speaker, Acuff believes that procrastinators are short on permission. “Permission to start before the plan is perfect. Permission to find out what they’re actually capable of.”
He’s probably not referring to people like me who just need to carve out a three-hour window to write a column about what’s blossoming or wilting in my neck of the woods. But then again, maybe he is.
At any rate, all I had to do to light a fire under my keyboard was quit vacillating and go fill my wine glass because the first one went down like water before I had a chance to finish the first paragraph. I also needed to go find out why Earl the Duke from Here hadn’t returned from the bullrushes along the creek after I let him out two hours ago.
Yes, in the last couple of weeks, my favourite feline has graduated to exploring Planet Earth as a living, breathing entity instead of just looking at it through the double-paned glass of the living room window.
So far, Earl returns from his Huckleberry Finn adventures when I call his name, although the minutes that pass between when I start hollering for him and when he bounds towards me like a scene from Love Story are admittedly getting longer and longer. He’s loving being outside, and I can’t blame him. It’s the cat’s meow for me, too. The great outdoors has introduced Earl to many fascinating experiences, including the prickly seed heads of the burdock plant after he returned one afternoon with countless burs in his long fur, which is now lopsided here and there due to me cutting the burs out with scissors.
Tonight, when I called Earl, he did not return in my timely fashion, so I grabbed the can of smelly cat food and a spoon and stood outside banging on the can to lure him in. No word of a lie, came running a very large skunk that stopped every few feet to smell the air. Out of sheer panic I started to do the “wiggle” that my sister-in-law Tanice told me was a good way to shift negative emotions out of my body by “wiggling the bejesus” out of it. It’s so hilarious looking that I was sure the skunk would run screaming into the field.
Then bounding in my direction was Earl, until he spotted Pepe Le Pew. But that’s another story.
