Procrastination

I procrastinate.
I am NOT proud of it.
I find it a very irritating quality in myself.

If there were a line drawn separating whimsy and discipline, I, like most people, would fall in the region along the line and some distance into each side. Most people would fall, break a leg, and stay right there most of their lives, moving just a little from where they landed. Or that's what I think. I, on the other hand, will be found dancing in complex involutes and epicycloids and lissajous curves across said band of region. I believe in discipline. I believe in free spirited whimsy too. Both are essential.

However, procrastination, while stemming from a lack of discipline, is not whimsy either. And it is insidious, sneaking in and waving bright red and yellow flags around things you want to see, as opposed to things you need to see. And once you turn your face, it freezes you in position.

Ironically, I tend to be rather productive when I'm peaking in procrastination. It's like if I am avoiding doing A, I avoid it not by simply not doing A, but by not having time to do A, because I'm too busy doing other necessary things like B and then C and then D... Productive, though not in the ideal direction.

In fact, at all important times, I have discovered new hobbies, found new interests, done really interesting things, or at worst, read/saw a good series of books/TV. These include, over the past few years, discovering Orkut and bumping into school friends not seen in years, finding and downloading comic books online, torrent downloads, discovering graphic novels, Napster(yes, Napster! way back when!) Lucifer, Sandman, Facebook, Grey's Anatomy, Instructables, Foundation, Classical Music, ProjectW, Cooking, Xanth, the Wandering Minstrels, Bones, Prison Break, Fables, XKCD, and more...
(As I previewed this post, I realized what I had just written. At all important times, I have been procrastinating.)

However, as cool and enriching all of these were, I still need to get things done. So I hope to dance rather more around the discipline side of the line, while holding on to my whimsy and directing my chaotic energies in a more orderly fashion. I hope to stop procrastinating, whether it is out of laziness, or fear, or simply inertia. Whatever. Which brings me to the point which I have been aiming to make all this long. Its a quote from Grey's Anatomy which kicked me square on my butt, because I realized how true it was. Here goes.

"A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying."