Read This Instead of Working

On procrastination

After one helluva hiatus, I’m back baby, and excited to welcome readers, both familiar and new!

I’ll be dropping into your inbox with less frequency than in the past, but I couldn’t be more thrilled to have reacquainted myself with writing, even if the path to this tea for two, for me and for you, was winding, erratic and clearly designed by someone who is non compos mentis. But isn’t that the point of this news-ish letter, of the Mad Make Party?

Down to it, then. The thing is I’ve always thought of myself as a writer, even when the words are left largely floating around my limbic system. More accurately, I’ve always thought I should be a writer, but the problem with procrastination is that it tends to undermine belief. I wouldn’t say it does something so active as rattle the core. Rather, it sits around fecklessly in the more dimly lit recesses of one’s mind, waiting not to pounce, but to recline to a near horizontal, pull its belt back a couple of notches and ask for another cream soda.

So why do we procrastinate? Because depending on what you’re eating, fizz and the kind of chemical ultra-sweetness that activates tooth sensitivities and digestive issues can taste pretty good. I know I know. Ingesting cream soda is the culinary equivalent of using hydrochloric acid to clean a wound, you say. I agree. Too much carbonation provokes the kind of flatulence that can be triggered surreptitiously even by something so unlikely to make one laugh as a vintage yo mama joke, you say. Yes, I see. Those are not the unbridled effects we’re looking for. But what if one is up against something that tastes bitter and is leaving one feeling a bit salty? It’s all about equilibrium.

Procrastination can be an expression of freedom of a certain kind, I think, or at least the desire for freedom. It’s a hunt for the somewhat innocuous and non-life threatening thrill of the what-if-I-just-don’t-do-it kind. It’s a way to bolster the limper days with artificial effervescence. The problem with these sorts of solutions is that a crash often ensues, and one’s morale and sometimes even self-worth can get caught up in the carambolage.

I’ve asked myself honestly why I put things off, even the things that feel as though they would define me the most accurately, the most clearly, that would provide me with the most eloquent and thought-provoking self-portrait. Don’t we all want to contemplate our features radiant from within, lit from without and perfectly proportioned, in a space where there are no obstructions? The thing is, we often get in our own way.

I’ve asked myself honestly why moving forward feels so laborious sometimes, why the incline feels so steep, why I don’t just put one foot in front of the other, progressively, until the ground levels, until the momentum gains and my gait picks up the steam and speed that will carry me swiftly and half-mad to my destination. And the answer to this essential, epicentral question is: I don’t wanna.

I guess the point is, why donni¹?

Fear of Failure

Is the fear of failure universal? Who’s on the other end of this wave length? Will they make any sense of what I’m saying? Will I say the right thing, the sane thing, the sensible thing, the acceptable or even astute thing, or will I say some shapeless thing that will forever skulk in my frontal lobe threatening me with social abjection? Fear of failure isn’t the impetus for casual procrastination. It’s what drives the major setbacks and the drops-off-the-face-of-the-planet. Overcoming this obstacle is the stuff of multiple sessions with a therapist and inspirational aphorisms printed on t-shirts sold at Forever 21, or some place where the elastane content runs high.

As far as my writing is concerned, the fear is of failure by comparison. I don’t fear obscurity by comparison with say, Margaret Atwood.² I fear anonymity in comparison to, say, any number of figures with mediocre output who have nevertheless garnered significant media attention and a devoted following forever swelling like the belly of an old room-temperature Brie de Meaux. Because of course then I’ll have to confront what that says about me, about my ability. And while I may try to quell the raging pseudologi of failure by whispering half-truths about nepotism, perfect storms, opportunity and opportunism into their deaf ears, the truth is that I’ll accept the failings as innately mine. And if all goes according to the self-defeating plan, success will remain a chimera.

While I’m dribbling bleak profundities, please do:

Logistical Interference

I can be put off a task indefinitely by:

• The inability to retrieve a password;

• Having to reset a password;

• Forgetting how to use a tool;

• Forgetting how to navigate a dashboard or other interface;

• Having to navigate a bunch of new features and wade through general technological flotsam when all I want to do is the THING;

• Having to use the phone as an apparatus through which to deliver vocal information to a live auditor (also referred to as making a phone call);

• Feeling subservient to the social media meta gods;

• The unwillingness to resolve skill issues related to skills I find boring.

One thing I continuously have to learn: it’s much easier to keep going than to stop and start again. Simple physics. Let the momentum take you.

Me painting my mantle instead of working.

Boredom

I’m fond of telling my kids that only the boring are bored, and while this quip is designed to ignite their latent curiosity about all things (any day now), the truth is that lack of stimulus is profoundly boring.

Lack of stimulus for me often involves superficiality or repetition, or both, leading to shocking levels of procrastination. The relentless repetitiveness of correcting student papers, for instance, combined with the threat of being presented undeniable proof that I’m a bad teacher in the form of misspelled conjecturing, is enough to convince me the entire house needs an immediate clean, from eaves to baseboards.

I generally stave off the bats of boredom³ by obsessively making stuff. My weapons of choice are often, but by no means limited to, pens and needles. I’m not sure there’s anything so satisfying for me as creating an object that is aesthetic, useful and meaningful, both anchored and driven, paradoxically, by the universal and enduring desire to elevate the everyday. Procrastination can simply be a beautiful thing.

Fear of success

What if in actual fact I’m deeply fearful of recognition - of my face in the street, my work on a page - because I’ll be irrevocably (and irrecoverably) exposed to criticism, to the judgment of others, propelled or expelled from the literary essential, erected to be admired or torn down to be dismissed if not despised?

Nah, that’s not it.

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I’ve realized, oddly, that procrastinating in small ways can save time. A phone call I’ve put off (never happens) resolves itself, a solution arises while I’ve been catch-stitching a hem instead of addressing a problem, that sort of thing. But on the whole, I think I’ve come to realize that procrastination is really about maintaining a modicum of control. By putting the pleasure before the pain, I temporarily remove the ass from before the ache⁴, in other words, I briefly dispense with the nuisance. On a more profound level, moving the blocks of necessary action and gratifying pursuit around the slippery hours of the day gives me a better grasp on their elusive progress. The trick is to exploit the lighter side of procrastination and avoid its dank underbelly. Then the narrative starts to make sense and, better still, is actually put legibly down to page.

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What makes you put things off? Or are you one of the superfolk who always just gets it done? I’m curious.

1. A new form of don’t I introduced for the first time here as far as I know.

2. Margaret Atwood, no less. The hubris will not be contained.

3. These are the cuter, creepier cousins of the beasts of burden.

4. I can reliably inform you that assache is an existing alternative to pain in the ass/arse/butt.