"I get knocked down, but I get up again"

It’s blessed my heart to read so many responses and see the same line in so many blogger’s posts: “…As a procrastinator…”. It’s made me feel so much better because it’s not just me! Hahahahaha. So good.

The Cons:

It causes me great anxiety to know something needs to be done and that I need to do it. Putting it off just makes it seem bigger and more difficult than it really is. Definite con.

Procrastinating makes me feel like a “bad person” and the guilt and shame that come with it are really heavy. I beat myself up about not doing the laundry when it is simple to just do the freaking laundry. But no, I sit and stare at it instead and the resentment builds as well as the anxiety until I’m a shaking, crying mess. Ughhhh. When will I learn do just “do the thing” and not put myself through the mental anguish of putting it off?

Procrastinating means – for me, anyway – that there’s even more to do in a much shorter amount of time. All through my Uni degree, I’d say every time I submitted an assignment in the very last minute “I’m never doing this again! OMG!!!”

But did I do it again? You bet your ass I did. Every. Single. Time.

The Pros:

Whatever it is that I’ve put off until the last minute gets done. QUICKLY. A Janet who is racing against time is a creative and highly efficient Janet. As a writer, the process of first draft, editing and finishing suddenly become much faster. I don’t ‘babble’ as much when I’m under pressure to meet a deadline. Words are succinct, paragraphs shorter and my point a lot punchier. Housework gets done, Uni studies get finished with flourish or the garden gets sorted and restored to it’s former glory just as Alun’s pulling up in the driveway.

On that note, I will take 3 naps and do NOTHING all day on a weekend, but in that last hour before Alun comes home (as a Nurse, he works a lot of weekends), I spring into action and can multitask like a mofo. The Dishwasher gets loaded and a cycle started, laundry gets hung up or folded and neatly put away, floors are quickly swept, our bedroom made ‘show worthy’ and a little spray of lavendar on the pillows as a nice finish, garbage gets taken out, and the living room gets a quick tidy – all clutter away and all tabletops and benchtops clear. I’ll be leaning heavily against the wall and sweating when Alun breezes in through the front door (hahahahaha)…but by God, do I get it DONE.

Doing things around the house when I should have been doing a Uni assignment always lead to a very productive day. Go me. Instead of reading journals and researching the specified Uni topic, I instead finally mow the lawn, or I’ll fix things that I’m capable of fixing (let’s not discuss that it was me who broke them in the first place), or maybe I’ll bake a lovely tray of cupcakes and add beautiful sugar petals or little sugary flowers or designs to them because I pay attention to detail, me. The wrong details when I’m procrastinating…but even so, I think it counts for something.

In reverse – doing an assignment when house chores need doing meant I got my assignments in well before the deadline (by ‘well before‘ I mean submitted by 9am if the deadline was 10:30am). This was rare but when it happened, it made me so happy. Lol.

Dishes can wait. Uni Professors can’t.