Procrastination

Procrastination has plagued me my whole life. I don't know if it's getting better or worse to be quite honest. Some days I feel hopeful - some days I can tell myself to just "do it" - whatever "it" is. Sometimes it's making a followup phone call to a prospective employer, sometimes it's cooking vegetables for dinner, sometimes it's getting on the treadmill.

But then there's these other things that I just can't seem to dive into. The ironic thing is that some of the projects I procrastinate about are actually things I enjoy doing. For instance, the heritage scrapbook I've been working on for my mom. I confiscated all of her family photos nearly four years ago - with the promise that I would NOT take three years to complete the albums like I'd taken three years to complete my brother's heritage album. Like I said, that was four years ago. So what keeps me from completing it - like so many other projects I've started?

I suspect one of the problems is that some of the projects I take on seem just too big. For one thing, with the heritage album, there really isn't any place to spread everything out without turning the house into a total disaster. But more than that is the sheer magnitude of the project. Organizing all the pictures, putting historical information together, deciding how to organize the album, and then, finally, deciding how to set up each page. Then if company comes over everything has to get packed up and put away and by the time I unpack it I have to start the organization process all over because so much time has passed I've forgotten what my organizational thought process was when I last worked on it.

The same problem exists for so many other projects. There's 1000s of recipes that need to be scanned and organized, 10,000 pieces of paper that need to have something done with them, and years and years of photos that need to be dealt with. And the longer I procrastinate the bigger the project grows - and the older I get.

Growing up my dad was always a big talker (we called it something else back then but I'll keep this clean). I think Dad had some big dreams and some things he really wanted to accomplish in life - but he just never did them. In my younger adult life I remember not wanting to be like that. But now I see I haven't escaped this family trait as much as I would have liked.

But maybe I am a little different than Dad if I think about it - because I have managed to do some of the things I used to talk about. For instance I did go to law school - even though I talked about it for years before finally doing so. I was 40 when I finished. How much further along would I be if I hadn't procrastinated all those years? I've been told I take a long time to make up my mind to do things. Am I procrastinating or just being cautious? It's not a big secret that I'm not a fan of change. But if I'm going to make big changes I want all my ducks in a row - I want to know there's security and safety at the other end of the change. So I procrastinate - or I take time to plan and think things through very carefully. It could all just be a matter of perspective. I don't know. I like thinking that when it comes to the big things in life I'm playing it safe rather than procrastinating. Kinda my way of putting a positive spin on things I guess.

I'm going to stop writing now since the only reason I started this was because I was procrastinating having to go to bed. I don't have a way to end this gracefully except to quote Scarlett O'Hara and say "Oh fiddle de dee," I can't be bothered with this now, I'll think about this tomorrow, because "After all, tomorrow is another day."

Optimism

So tonight Michael J. Fox had a TV special about optimism. He seems to have a lot of it despite having Parkinson's disease. He interviewed others who have optimism - people like Lance Armstrong and the Dali Lama. I watched it half-heartedly, not sure I was in a mood to be inspired tonight, but it did get me thinking about the topic -- again.

The burning question I have about this optimism thing is: how do you get it? If you weren't born with a type-A personality then optimism doesn't come naturally. If you weren't raised by parents who taught you anything and everything was possible in life if you worked hard enough for it and believed it would happen, or if they didn't teach you to think positively and believe that everything would turn out all right, then you grew up not learning how to be optimistic. So if you weren't born with it and weren't taught it during your formative years, then how do you get it?

Can you learn optimism late in life? If you're 45 years old and trying to find it, is it too late? Is it a skill? A talent? Or if it isn't already a part of who you are at this point in life, can you still become an optimist?

If it is possible to learn optimism then how does one go about it? Does one just wake up one morning and decide to be an optimist? Is just making a decision one day enough or is there some mantra that must be repeated? If so, for how long? Most habits take seven days to learn. Can one become an optimist in seven days just by telling yourself that you believe everything is going to work out OK? Is it simply an act of telling myself I will get the job I want, or the house I want, or live in the city I want? Is that enough?

And if I'm not an optimist does that mean I'm a pessimist? Does one have to be one or the other? Personally I think being a realist lies somewhere between the two. Being a realist means always having a Plan B in case Plan A doesn't work out. Does the need for a Plan B make me a pessimist? I hope not. I'd like more optimism in my life. I'd like to wake up tomorrow and believe that some of the impossible situations the people I love are facing are all going to work out - but I don't know if they will. I don't know if the situations in my own life, far less impossible, will work out. Am I being negative or realistic? If I wake up tomorrow and decide to become an optimist will it change the course of my life? Maybe. And maybe I was born to be a realist. A realist in the sense that I'll hope things will work out, I'll pray they will, but knowing I'm still going to need a Plan B. So maybe I'm an incurable realist - and maybe that's not so bad. Still, it couldn't hurt to experiment - to find a mantra - to wake up making a concerted effort to try optimism out for a few days. Maybe for a week I could wake up treating every morning as if it were New Year's Day - isn't that the feeling we have on New Year's Day? The feeling that we're getting a fresh start. That this year will be better. That this year everything will work out. A week of New Year's Days - it might be a fun experiment. But just in case it doesn't work out - I'll have to try a Plan B.