Procrastination

[Well, there there were a couple of things I was going to write that I skipped just because I didn't feel like writing them.  Yeah, most of the breaks between posts are for no other reason than, well, procrastination or just not feeling like writing whatever I intended to write next.  By the way, I have some stuff due in like 13 hours that I'm procrastinating on.  I mean, I like procrastination, so I put procrastination in my procrastination so I can procrastinate while I procrastinate.]

~I sat there and watched the time slip away.  Watched my goals slip away.  This wasn't how it was supposed to be.  This wasn't who I was supposed to be!!  Why?  What am I doing?!  Or, more importantly, what am I not doing, and why am I not doing it?!  I silently raged at myself.  I was being a fool.  If I was really a smart person, or not even smart, if I was at least a semi-reasonable person, then why would I bet everything on nothing?!  You didn't have to be a genius to understand how illogical the choice was.  I could do what I needed to do, or I could leave my future to chance.  I could do what I wanted to do, or I could throw away whatever talent I had.  All for no reason at all.  For all the control I had over my mind, the control over my feelings and my emotions and my desires, all of it was thrown into chaos by one thing that I seemed to be unable control.  Procrastination.  Why?!!  Whyyyyyyy-----???!!! I screamed as I fell to my knees...~

I guess you could say I was a master at procrastinating.  Living on the edge.  The bleeding edge.  Assignment due in an hour?  Let's see how fast my pencil can move.  Test in 30 minutes?  Time to put that "data-graphic" memory to the test.
I was apparently a good estimator too.  Glance at a worksheet: I think it'll take me... 45 minutes.  Look at a project: I think I can write that code in... 2 hours.  But you know what they say: It only takes a minute if you wait 'til the last minute.
And then it seemed that I was quite the gambler.  I think I can do this in 45 minutes, so... I'm going to give myself 40 minutes, and hope I exceed my expectations or get lucky somehow.

But there was one thing I couldn't understand.  Why, instead of, say, doing something from 3 pm to 5pm, would I choose to spend 12 hours thinking about doing that thing, and then end up doing it from 3 am to 5 am?  Why, when faced with something meaningful, would I throw away a 99+% chance of success just to even the odds at 50-50, or worse?  The time I spent stressing myself out over things that weren't getting done was surely many times longer than the time I spent actually doing those things.  And I didn't like stressing myself out.  And I was supposed to be a smart person...

I even ended up procrastinating on a lot of the things I "wanted" to do.  There were a whole bunch of videos I was going to upload.  I never did.  Problems I was going to look into.  They were never considered.  Games that I was going to play.  Skills that I was going to develop.  Stuff that I was going to write.  Unplayed, undeveloped, unwritten.

Whether or not I was successful in this manner, this wasn't who I wanted to be.  This just wasn't who I wanted to be!  I'll change myself!  I can change myself!  I will change myself!  If not today, well maybe tomorrow...