Journeys–Trips with Falls

Surprise! Hellooooo, everyone!

I am here, alive, and well. Really faked you out, hmmmm? I am sorry for the concern I caused you…I am back from an expert in maladies such as mine and the diagnosis is in…I suffer from severe procrastinitus disorder. Yes, it is a terrible thing! It affects so many people on a global level–it especially affects those who associate with those of us with said disorder. Yes, you have disorder in your life because we are not prompt in taking care of chaos, so it spills over. Whew.

So, one of the symptoms of procrastinitus is not being timely on blog posts/updates, even though you absolutely-truly-ya-gotta-believe-me!-wanna-do-it. Another symptom is being a horrid deadline pusher–it can almost be an addiction! You feel the rush and pressure to get something done by x o’clock and BAM! you crank it out in record time! Yeah, I’ve done it occasionally.

Like, my sophomore year of high school…I was in a Creative Writing class with a lot of my friends and a very open and sharing teacher. Yeah. You know the kind…she spent more time talking to the class about her life’s problems than teaching. But that is another post…. It was during that class I decided I would put an END to PROCRASTINATION and take an entire week to write my paper instead of the usual hour or so the night before. (I would write my paper, then write my rough draft and edit it to match my paper that I had actually done first. Ummm hmmm…somethings wrong here!) The paper I so painstakingly did the “correct” way–notes, rough draft, edit, rewrite, etc.–got a C! “Too padded,” she wrote. Then, I understood; given time, I would keep moving, adding, tweeking, when my original paper was just fine. Ahhhh! The POWER of procrastination!

Another experience–in college, we had to do packet work–researching a negative character trait in ourselves that we wanted to change and coming up with a plan to change it. There was a lot of work involved–hypothesis and then three books on the subject had to be read and summarized, then you pull from those books nuggets to help you on your better-you path. A plan was written (with predictions) and then followed for at least two weeks, with your reflections and experiences noted. Then you wrote a revised plan and predictions. There were two due for the semester and this reflected our total grade. I did my final one the night before in about three hours. I wrote the initial plan, figured what would have gone right and wrong had I actually done it, revised my plan, and concluded (along with all of the other required stuff). My professor liked my packet so much, she asked if she could keep a copy as a sample for students to model after in subsequent classes. My subject? The dire character flaw? Procrastination.

Yeah.

Thanks for reading!

Jenn