PRO-crastination

Because you’d never trust an amateur to do it.

Come on, admit it, we all do it—procrastinate. Some of us do it more often, some of us do it better than others. I fall in between the best/worst and worst/best of both groups; sometimes I’m bad, and sometimes I receive “a wakeup call.”

Monday was one of those days. I was contemplating a post about my newer-than-the-new hearing aids I wrote about last month. I replaced those (a non-prescription pair) with a far more expensive prescription set. I had dragged my heels about the whole affair and bought the cheaper pair because…well, because I had procrastinated about the whole affair. As I wrote in “Aging is Hell,”

“…this (getting hearing aids) is a clear signal that yes, I am old.”

Who could blame me? But on Monday, this cartoon popped up in my feed:

I lived that cartoon as the guy on the left. On the right? My father, who died from esophageal cancer in 1999.

Dad distrusted most professionals and had a special loathing for doctors. When he first started feeling the effects of the cancer, he pooh-poohed it and did not seek treatment (or even a consultation). If you know anything about esophageal cancer, it’s a fast-mover. Dad was a smoker for a long while but gave it up in the eighties, a heavy drinker, and worked as a plasterer for most of his lifetime. He was batting near 1.000 in the “high risk” categories, but ignored all of the signs, living quietly with his discomfort. Eventually, it became clear what was going on, but by then it was too late.

Dad was a professional procrastinator, top of the line, and this (and other occasions) made me vow not to be like him. Just like everyone else, I find it ain’t easy sometimes.

Like now.

The hearing aid conundrum had a happy conclusion (I love the new prescription pair and they are soooooooooooo much better than the first set that it’s not even funny), and you’d think this lesson would make an impression, but…no. I’ve got a laundry list of things to do in two categories—“want to do” and “should do”—and it’s getting longer every day. Some people procrastinate because of fear, while I do it for the simplest of reasons.

I’ve got too much to do.

I won’t bore you with the details (though if you could see my lists, you’d be moved). I’ve got stuff to write, stuff to read, stuff to do out in the yard and the garden, and maintenance on the house and people to see and places to go and so on and so forth. And it seems the more I try to get a grip, the worse I feel about getting behind. So I procrastinate some more.

Take this post. I had set a goal a couple of months ago that I’d post every week, and last week I set a new goal of always posting on the same day to improve my “regularity” with readers.

Today’s post was supposed to be written and published yesterday.

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