Never Put Off Until Tomorrow What You Can Do Next Weekend.

As I write this blog, I'm merely delaying doing some things I should have done weeks ago.

Now, I've got a perfect excuse: The movie I keep mentioning in the fervent hope that my lack of subtlety will encourage you to buy one when it comes out.

On the other hand, I've always got a perfect excuse.

You see, in addition to my many other accolades, I am a Founding Father of the Procrasti Nation.

I'm always late. I'm forgetful. And I work in a deadline profession, which merely exacerbates my tendency to put things off until the last possible minute.

Someone with a better background in psychology than mine (my background in psychology consists of taking psychological tests for money in college and knowing a bartender who's study psychology at Rutgers) once asked if I felt like I had avoidance issues.

I don't. I'm late to things I enjoy just as often as I'm late to things I don't. I'm late to work, an everyday job, just as often as I'm late to one-shot meetings.

Some of it's bad karma: I once missed a day of work because my car broke down and Triple A never showed. Well, maybe bad "carma" would be a more appropriate excuse.

Sometimes I just doze off. I'll be sitting at home, watching TV, thinking, "Ooh, I should leave in fifteen minutes," and an hour later I'm blinking and sneezing and wondering what the hell happened.

And one of the hazards of working at night is I sleep late, and consequently try to schedule appointments at the perfect time to give me enough sleep and still get me to work on time. Then, inevitably, either A) I oversleep, making me late for the appointment; or B) the appointment runs long, making me late for work. Or as sometimes happens, C) both.

I'll try anything - when in a hotel on the road, I'll get two wake-up calls, 15 minutes apart. I set two alarms at home if I have to get up early. I've had people call me specifically to wake me up.

And yes, I sleep like a rock, that doesn't help in the "sleep through your alarm" department.

Another problem is that I try to cram so much stuff into a day, it takes too long, either keeping me up too late at night (like this blog) or running too close to the time I have to leave for work in the afternoon. Another thing is that, like everyone else, every once in a while, I need a day where I just don't do anything, whether than means going straight to bed after work (because I'm exhausted) or just sitting around watching TV (because my brain's too fried to think).

So I save a lot of errands and other tasks for weekends. And I've spent almost every weekend this year traveling to Maryland.

And oddly enough, despite having to get up at a godawfully early hour most of the time, I was hardly ever late. Go figure.

Nonetheless, that means I'm behind on everything else.

And that means it's time to get to work.

Links:
The CMU psychology department
The Rutgers psychology department

(Insert witty comment here.)