The Sadly Uninteresting Story of a Chronic Procrastinator (NYNY)

I've been thinking about this prompt since it went up, and it's been rather obscenely difficult to for me to decide what to write about.

Could it be that I'm just so on top of everything that there's really nothing that's been relegated to the back burner/top shelf/dusty recesses of hypothetical future to-do lists?

Resounding "no." That could not be it. The issue here is, in fact, that I put off everything.

I mean, everything. I put off things until they are no longer relevant. I let them go on and on and fade off into the distance where all the never-quites go to die.  Of course, some of them don't die, they just mold and get sadder and smaller until I work up the courage to fetch them, make some attempt to clean them up and reincorporate them back into my life. Most of them don't ever fully recover.

I've done a few things this week that had been put off for a while. I finally told my second job about my impending third job. I cleaned out all of my voicemail at work. I took care of some new-car registration paperwork. I could go on with this list, but that would be missing the point: anything that I've done this week (or the week before that, or for the last ten years) was put off until the last minute. It's a lifestyle.

The impulse to just take care of this right now, before I forget or get distracted? I don't got it. If I did, I would have taken the trash out last night instead of remembering once I was halfway to work that I had missed it. I would already have a new roommate lined up for next month. I would write more. I would probably have everything I ever wanted and an endless supply of freshly baked bread!

At the very least, I wouldn't be quite so damn stressed out all the time.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I am going to, right now, make a phone call that I've been putting off...

... *calling* ...

... done. I mean, except that I can't get ahold of anyone. So on my way home from work I am going to stop by the office of the non-profit I volunteer with and pick up the package that's been waiting for me since before Christmas. That's it. Just pick up a box! You wouldn't think it would be so hard.

And that's how it's going to go. For the next week, at least, I am going to address at least one thing, per day, as soon as I think of it. Make the phone call, send the e-mail, light the candle, scrub the floor, whatever. Not in five minutes or after one more cup pot of coffee. Right away.

The long term goal would be to completely banish the phrase, "in just a few minutes," from my vocabulary. But we gotta start slow, right?