The Procrastination

Seriously, when did I become the laziest person in the world? I remember when I ws motivated. I made exhaustive lists of everything I wanted to accomplish. I actually wrote them down, and then felt that satisfaction of crossing things out. I even crossed out the last thing on the list before I threw the list away.

Now, it's a whole different story. I may go to bed the night before with grandiose plans. I ay say to myself, "OK, tomorrow, I'm going to get up at 8 and work out, and then repaint the living room, and then perfect my downhill slalom, and then maybe I'll make a nice creme brulee, ooh, I should barbecue tomorrow, that means I'm goign to have to go to Jewel at some point, I can go after the slaloming, but before the brulee, well, I'll need things for that anyway, so that sounds good, wow I'm goign to be so busy tomorrow...I'd better relax now and watch some Friends."

It's three hours later, I've watched 7 episodes of Friends, and it's 2 in the morning. I start to go to bed, but "oh you know, I should check my email, just in case someone else is up at this ungodly hour and they had something important to tell me." Of course no one does, but now I feel like I have to do something to make coming downstairs worthwhile, so I look at all the comics that I read, but I actually get mad if some of them haven't updated to the next day's strip. But then during the day, I'll completely forget to read that one, and I'll just go to the ones that I read the night before, and I'll be unhappy about the lack of humor, because I've read that strip maybe eight hours before.

Sorry. I digress.

The point is that I set my alarm valiantly for 8 am, but while I'm in bed, I hit the snooze until 9 am, justifying the fact that if I'm painting the living room, then I'll be lifting things, and that's really the same as working out, so it's OK for just this once and I can sleep later, and not work out. Then it's 9 am, and I hit the snooze and lay there until 10:30. Then I decide I should get up, but to really wake up, I should watch House Invaders, because, let's be honest, I need some ideas for the whole living room painting extravaganza, and maybe they'll have something cool.

So I spend the next hour watching tacky English people paint their Ikea shelves and mount them on the wall, while eating chips and salsa, the breakfast of champions. Then maybe I can inspire myself to shower, but oh first, I should check my email to see if anyone wrote this morning with incredibly important news.

Never mind that I spend the morning not answering my cell phone which is ringing off the hook, no doubt with important news that I actually do need to hear.

So now it's 2 pm and I figure I should eat something, you know, before the slaloming, but I can't just eat, I should turn on the TV. Oh hey, there's a tape I haven't seen. So I sit down for an hour to "eat" when I really eat in five minutes and then spend the next 45 minutes watching an old episode of CSI.

And then I decide that I'm actually going to go and buy those skis, because they're a kind of important part of the whole slaloming extravangaza, but I'm not sure how much I can spend, so I wander back down to the computer to balance my checkbook. But I can't find all my receipts. So I clean off my desk. Then I realize that I need something to put my receipts in, so I drive to Office Max to invest in some sort of personal organizing device which looks strangely like a number of other devices that I have for organization, but the important thing is that this one matches the metal on the lamp that I have next to my computer.

Oh wait. That lamp hasn't been working. I should look at lamps too.

Now it's 4:30, and I realize that I haven't actually left the house. There have been no exercises, no painting, no slaloming, and I'm still far away from creating any sort of creme brulee masterpiece. And I haven't been to work. I should go once in a while, you know?

But before I leave, I should check my email, just to be sure that no one told me anything important. If they did, I'll just call them from the road.

Instead, I just call the ex from the road. I spend that time complaining about the traffic, because I've waited until 5:00 to leave for work, so I'm driving in the middle of rush hour, and no one else is at the office, but that's OK, because I only needed to make some phone calls, oh but they were to people who work during normal business hours, so I make a to do list and leave it on my desk, because obviously I can't get these things done at home.

Then I leave, and I'm hungry. Because I haven't eaten since 2 pm, and now it's 8 pm. Maybe I'll just order a pizza. Ooh. Pizza Hut sounds good. I'll call them. Then I'll go pick it up.

Ooh! Is that a Friends tape? I haven't seen Friends since yesterday. But I'll only watch till 10 pm, because then the regular episode comes on on channel 9. And what if I don't have that one on tape? I can watch the tapes whenever.

And it's 2 am, and I've accomplished nothing. I think about how much I wanted to get done, and I tell myself that if I write out a list, maybe there's actually a chance that I'll do some it. But I'm not going to write a list now. I'm going to bed. I'll do it tomorrow.