Constructive Procrastination

Procrastination gets a bad rap. I, myself, can be quite productive while procrastinating. Take this morning, for instance. I am supposed to be out buying my husband Christmas gifts. I know just what I want to get him. I have measurements. I know where I’m going to get them. The problem is I can’t seem to shed my soft, cozy pajamas. So, for the last hour and a half, instead of readying myself to shop, I’ve done the dishes, fifteen push-ups, tidied up the common areas, folded and put away clothes, sheets and towels that I dumped on the futon to get out of the way, taken out some recycling, read a morning devotional, turned on Skype in case my mom wants to talk and now I’m writing. All this follows a very healthy breakfast. I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. Except that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’ve written this before: my nails never look better than when I’m deeply engaged in writing. I notice every uneven nail, hang nail, dry spot and desperate need for polish (to cover them up) when I’m supposed to be writing. I never want to do what needs to be done. When I have writing that needs to be done, I am able to summon the energy I need to exercise. When my thighs start chafing from lack of exercise, I find that it’s an opportune time to make those dreaded follow-up phone calls. When it’s time to make a dentist appointment, the yard gets mowed or the house vacuumed so it’s too noisy to use the phone. When the floors look like someone left a dry ice machine running all night, there are so many dust floaties, I get a hankering for real healthy food for dinner that night, so I go grocery shopping. When it’s time to make dinner, I wash my hands and suddenly realize how filthy the bathroom looks, so I clean it knowing that I couldn’t possibly handle food after doing that. When the bathroom really is filthy, I press my husband’s shirts so, if he notices the vulgar state of the bathrooms, at least he has his choice of any shirt to wear to work in the coming days. Distraction or penance?

It all comes down to distraction, doesn’t it? Intended distraction. Purposeful distraction.

Christmas time is not the time to procrastinate. I’ve learned this fifty or so times. Before Thanksgiving, I wrapped all the gifts my husband and I bought over the year for various friends and family members. Since then, they have sat looking festive in our dressing room. They’re getting dusty. Some are in gift bags, so I assume the gifts are also getting dusty since I didn’t have enough tissue paper to jam in to protect them and didn’t (and still don’t) feel like going out and buying some. They’ll likely be late again. Why is this? I fear our friends and relations picture us scurrying around the week before Christmas buying whatever to send to them when this is not true. We’re thinking of them all year round picking up this and that to set aside. I can, with all good intentions, sit and hand write a letter – hand write – to stick in a Christmas card, walk away leaving it folded neatly in an envelope that remains unaddressed and unstamped for so long that by the time I feel like addressing it, it’s old news and Valentine’s Day.

Those times I actually settle in to do what needs to be done aren’t much better. Douglas is planning on taking off the week before Christmas. My plan is to have the house clean and tidy so that we can decorate and enjoy it without having to dust and vacuum and such. I know that I’ll leave a pile in every room, a pile of things I don’t know what to do with. I know I’ll mop, but not bother to get the corners since that would take me two more minutes. I’ll dust, but leave the cobwebs in the rafters since swooshing them out would mean pulling out the long-handled duster thingy that I will have already used on the paintings and put away. I’ll wash all the dishes except the tea-leaf strainer that Douglas uses and I don’t know what to do with. I just don’t understand it. I don’t like it, so I don’t wash it. I’ll wash the interior of the windows, but not the exterior because it’s cold and I’d have to wrestle the step ladder around the house. Too much work for December. I’m supposed to be jolly. Who cares if the neighbors can see our tree?

I’ll make candy and cookies and bread. I miss sugar cookies so I’m planning on making some this year. I don’t like rolling out the dough, though – it always sticks to something – so I’ll pound small bits with my fists, pinch the edges with my fingers, throw on some colored sugar and call it done. They’ll taste good. I want to make a trifle like I had at my friend Josie’s house. The trouble is, I’ll want the brownie trifle and Douglas will want the berry trifle. To please both of us, I’ll make both – almost. I’ll lay out the mousses, the fresh whipped cream, berries and brownie bits alongside a couple of empty bowls and we can each layer out own trifle. (I’m pretty sure the brownie bits won’t survive long enough to form a proper layer in a trifle dish anyway.) I always seem to be a crank or two short of churning the cream into butter, a pouch shy of leavening to bring the dough to its fullness, a topstitch shy of finishing off a collar or one good pounding short of making the nail head flush. It’s like I’m trying to play contract bridge with an incomplete deck of cards. Wait. Few cards short of a deck. That’s not what I mean to say. (Gotta work on my metaphors. Or similes. Whatever these are supposed to be.)