Some People Call It Procrastination

SOME PEOPLE CALL IT PROCRASTINATION
By
DeBorn Luzer

I just had a new realization last week about the way I have of getting things done. I also discovered that it works quite well, for the most part, that is. I can’t really call it procrastination even though it comes pretty close, by description. Actually, I’ve had visions of becoming a procrastinator but I just seem to keep putting it off until a later time..
I was sharpening my knife at the time when I realized that I actually had a plan for getting things done. Not that my knife needed sharpening just at that particular time; it has needed sharpening for a couple of weeks, or more. The point was, I was sharpening it then because I was putting off doing something else that needed to be done but was much more boring and tiresome. Filling out paperwork has never been one of my most enjoyable pastimes and I have a stack of forms waiting for the lawyers and insurance company and social security people who say they just have to have them. I don’t understand why because they now know more about me and my medical history than most of the doctors. All of them just keep asking the same questions over and over in different ways even though the answers all come out the same.
I got to thinking, while I was sharpening my knife, about how many other things I had gotten accomplished that day while avoiding the pile of paperwork. I had paid all of my bills for the month by on-line computer banking, and while I was already on the computer I found that new anchor lock for my little fishing boat that I’ve been looking for, for so long, also answered all my emails, picked up all the dead limbs in the yard, filled the bird and squirrel feeders, read through all the magazines I was behind on, and worked all the crossword puzzles in the paper. I even carried off the week’s trash, stopped by the hardware store to buy paint for picture frames, fixed a set of curtains that kept falling down, and entered the magazine sweepstakes. All of the time I was doing this I just thought that I was being really industrious.
After sitting and thinking about what was actually going on with me I decided that this maybe was a good way for me to get other things done that need doing. No matter what I have to get done and have been avoiding I’ll simply find something else that needs doing and that I hate worse. That way all the other things will get finished while I’m in the process of avoiding the thing that I really hate doing. Are you still with me?
The only flaw I see about this method of accomplishment is that I’ll be so busy doing things that need to be done while avoiding the things that I hate to do that I won’t have time to do the things I want to do, like fishing. I just can’t seem to enjoy going fishing when I still have things that need to be done, even if they are unpleasant. That’s the reason I’ve always yearned to be a procrastinator; they just put off whatever it is they don’t want to do and go ahead and fish. Maybe I’ll find a way to become one next week.