i didn't want to say this, but
waiting until the last minute
For what must be the hundredth time this week, I am staring with dread at my to-do list full of things I want to do and brainstorming ways to avoid them. My persistent procrastination always felt like laziness to me; an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Newton’s law and nothing more. A stubborn refusal to do that which I know must be done. I’m almost positive this behavior is considered self-destructive — I feel its effects enough to know it must be. A cursory google search confirms: maladaptive tendencies such as procrastination and avoidance are self-destructive in nature. And yet often, the opposite feels true.
Procrastination feels like self-preservation at first. A delay in the inevitable disappointment that feels like an escape from it. You can’t do anything badly if you don’t do anything at all. No one can be disappointed in the result if there is no result. The catch is, of course, that people are likely to be more upset with a lack of results than a poor one. This disappointment is easier to deal with — easier to convince yourself that you could have done well if you’d bothered to do it at all. A stubborn refusal to fail that, in itself, creates failure.
The consequences for doing things well can be almost as punishing in their reward as the consequences for doing things poorly or not at all. When you do things well, a friend once pointed out to me, people start to expect you to do them better and more often. I had been mocking him for being good at many things, but not great at anything, realizing too late that he might have cracked a code I didn’t yet understand. The adequate completion of a single task often leads to the addition of several more.
After initial steps come next steps. I delay running a load of laundry because I know when it’s finished, I’ll have to trek back down to the basement to dry the clothes, then back down once more to retrieve them between the times when the dryer stops and the wrinkles start. I am reluctant to recover them from the dryer because I know they’ll only demand to be folded and put away. All so that I can take a fresh shirt from my closet in the morning. It’s the difference between mapping out a trip and getting in the car. Each turn looks so simple on the map, the journey minimized to hold both the point of origin and the destination in view at once. But in the car, after taking one too many wrong turns or driving for too long without seeing a single tree or hill on the horizon, when neither the start nor the finish is within reach, you can’t help but wonder if the journey is worth it.
Efforts that look like the last often lead to more in unforeseen ways. One turn unfolds a new and winding road. Each new step binds itself to the previous one, creating a staircase to a place I’ve never been. I’ve taken stairs before and think I know how and yet my footing continues to feel unstable. The unpredictability of the landing makes it impossible to know how long I’ll be climbing and what exactly I’ll see when I do finish. These new steps are, of course, what I want. I mount the first steps hoping for the opportunity to climb the steps beyond them. And when the next steps do finally reveal themselves to me, I am grateful but so tired from the journey I’ve already embarked upon to get to them that the idea of taking them starts, for a moment, to lose its appeal.
Rest, I am certain, will solve my fatigue and apprehension. Instead of pulling to the side of the road for a moment or navigating to a gas station where I might refill my tank, I meander down a side road — still driving, just a little slower and not towards where I need or want to be. Because it is not getting me closer to my destination, I consider it a break, though I am still putting miles on my car and diminishing the gas in my already dangerously low tank. This refusal to rest fully keeps me from my journey, and I welcome the distraction. I am unsure how to break the cycle of pseudo-rest and exhaustion, and so I revolve between the two, unable to locate the brake or the gas.
I procrastinate writing when I don’t know how to arrange the words I want to say, whether that’s essays or emails. Fear of misrepresenting myself or receiving a ‘no’ in reply. Fear of how that ‘no’ reflects on my character, my abilities. I avoid finishing the novel I’m only mildly enjoying, delaying myself from picking up another one I could appreciate more. I stall while getting ready to leave my house and once I finally arrive, I linger at my destination well past the time by which I expected to be back home and tucked neatly into my waiting bed. If I do manage to leave home early, I park my car and loiter in it until I become late, drawing out the time before doing the things I eagerly said I would do. I wait until the morning of my therapy session to attempt the homework I should have spent the last week working through because although I desperately want to feel better, all the measures I must take to get there make me feel temporarily worse. In the end, procrastination feels like self-preservation.
In all the trips I’ve started and finished before, arriving at the destination immediately makes the trip feel worth it. I know this to be true and yet the reminder does not make it any easier to put one foot in front of the other. It is not laziness, I now know, though I still find it so hard to accept, but fear that keeps me from finishing the things I start. Fear of failure, fear of what comes next, fear of being disliked or misinterpreted, fear of never having a moment to pause despite refusing every opportunity for a break I am offered along the way. Getting sick of the drive does not make the destination arrive any faster. All there is to do is refill the gas tank and drive off into the flat, flat horizon, trying to believe that mountains and the ocean and incalculable splendor lay just beyond it.
Saying the word “splendor” felt funny to me. Did it feel funny to read it? It’s definitely not part of my very cynical vernacular. I’m trying to expand my horizons at 26!
literally just about earrings
at thirteen I was desperate to pierce
a second hole in my earlobes
and at sixteen, a third
(though I never found
the courage or the time)
at twenty-three I let the second hole
in my left ear close up
because I was tired and sad
on my last day of twenty-five
I pierced it back open in my hallway mirror
trying to feel awake and alive
oh my god where is my brain
my phone is at 13%
and dear god, so am I
my check engine light can’t decide
if it wants to be on or off and
I’m getting it fixed on tuesday
I wish someone could plug me in
and tell me what’s wrong with me
have you tried turning it off
and turning it back on again?
and I’m on my second coffee of the day
(I keep getting them for free, thank god)
I’ve learned to love most
of the things I used to hate
libra szn
I keep tapping my own head and screaming
“is this thing on????”
and getting no response
I’m trying to be where my feet are
because I saw it on the cover
of a book I never read
pluto isn’t a planet anymore and the
ones that are left are all in retrograde
if I do something wrong it can’t be my fault
After a year and a half, I still don’t know how to finish these things (and so I’ve been procrastinating sending this out, naturally). Wanna see more of my face or see all of the British houses I keep pinning or listen to the playlists I make for the yoga classes I teach? I’m basically everywhere @serenakuj, which is mortifying in its own right. Otherwise, I’ll see you right here next week. Enjoy the fleeting warmth before it’s gone and go be nice to someone.
