Procrastination cat is not amused

For any of you that don't already use Gmail, or even for all of you that do, here's a video you should watch:

Gmail Theatre

I love it! Puppets make me smile.

I believe my levels of procrastination recently reached an all-time high. Last spring, I attended a library-related weekend workshop, worth one credit hour. I didn't really need that one credit hour, but the workshop sounded interesting. I really enjoyed it, but once I came back I put off starting the post-assignment. The assignment was just a 5-7 page paper - nothing fancy, nothing that difficult, nothing I shouldn't have been able to churn out in an hour or two. But, being the ridiculous master of procrastination that I am, and given that the deadline for the paper was arbitrary (the instructor gave a date for the deadline, but later said it didn't matter when she got it), I put the paper off until after finals. Surely, I would have plenty of time afterwards to write it up and send it off - at least that's what I told myself.

Note that this was last March. Almost an entire year ago.

"So," you're probably wondering, "when did you write the paper?" Well let's see... I took three classes over the summer, so I didn't make time to write it then. Fall started up almost immediately, and that led into all kinds of family issues by year's end, so I didn't write it then. During these months, I had started the paper and added to it several times, so it wasn't as if I ignored it completely. However, it wasn't until last week - Thursday night - that I finally just forced myself to go to a computer lab and write the damn paper. I sent it to the instructor, tail between my legs, hoping that she would accept it. She did (thank you thank you thank you), and I would have screamed in pure joy if it hadn't been 8am when I got her email response.

The moral of this whole story is this: Procrastination only works when you actually finish the thing you're putting off. And in no way was this a successful procrastination attempt. This paper plagued my mind for months, and each time I thought about doing it, I was overwhelmed with the realization that it was so severely overdue that I couldn't possibly think of any logical reason why I hadn't finished it. As time went on, working on it became an increasingly harder and daunting task. Surprisingly enough, I was actually pretty happy with the end result, so I guess that's a good thing? Eh.

Never again, my friends. Never again.

It's a good thing I'm not like this at work. When I'm there, I'm so focused and driven. And organized! God, I wish I could be that organized at home. I'm not sure why that is - aren't organized people supposed to be organized in ALL aspects of their life? I'm creative, I problem-solve, I get things done quickly - too bad that doesn't translate very well into my personal life. I guess that's a goal to strive for. At least, for now, my mind is free to focus on other things. And I promise I'm going back to my normal, "healthy" levels of procrastination.