I have 'til tomorrow.

So I'm sitting here in my apartment, it's 11:00 PM, the kids are here tonight, sleeping. I should be working on the syllabus for the course in copywriting I'm teaching starting this January. I should be entering my bills into my online bill payer system. I should be doing anything instead of what I'm doing. And what I'm doing is entering a post to my blog about why I'm not doing what I should be doing and instead writing a blog. That's what I do. I'm a procrastinator. And it's bitten me in the ass more times than I can count.

I guess it all started in grade school, when I put off making my shoebox diorama of the Jurassic Period until the night before it was due. And so, I was yanking stuffing out of an old stuffed animal and spray painting it green for the moss. And my dinosaurs were completely the wrong scale. My diplodocus was too frigging small and the tricerotops was way too frigging big. Besides, I don't think they lived during the same period anyway. Like that mattered. Then in high school, I never wrote out any of my papers or did outlines. There was never time. I sat at the typewriter and typed away, thinking on the fly, while on the phone with my girlfriend, with the radio on, eating a bowl of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. College wasn't much different. Waiting until the very last minute to do a term paper was a usual occurance. Who the hell wanted to be writing a paper on "Heart of Darkness" when there was beer around. "Heart of Darkness" was truly boring anyways. What I read of it. I put off reading it until a couple days before, and only got a few chapters into it before it was due. See...bitten in the ass.

So now, years older, but not much wiser, I'm still putting off things. And I wish those things were as simple as gluing some plastic dinosaurs to a Thom McCann box and painting a volcano in the background. (Because there ALWAYS has to be an exploding volcano when there are dinosaurs around, right?) Now, it's putting off paying the bills. Putting off the freelance work. Putting off making that phone call to my cousin in Atlanta. Putting off time sheets at work. Putting off cleaning the apartment. Of course, I never put off watching a movie. There's always time for that.

I have to admit, I do work better under pressure, but sometimes there just isn't enough time. I really hate those people who are so together that they have the following weeks worth of crap taken care of before the previous week is through. Screw them. I bet they drown puppies and harrass old people during all that time they saved.

Okay, there are some things that I don't ever procrastinate on. Sitting on my ass is one of them. I never seem to wait around for that. Buying Christmas gifts is another. I really like doing that, so I go out and buy stuff. The problem with that is, when it's time to wrap, and I pull everything out, I realize I got way too much stuff, because I forgot about everything I had bought. See, if I had waited til the last minute, that wouldn't happen. Oh, and I hate being late for a movie. I have to get there in time for previews and all. I want the whole experience.

Another thing I don't wait until the last minute to do is eat. I'm always on time with that, you bet your sweet ass.

I read that there is a seminar you can take on better time management, and overcoming procrastination. I'll look more into that tomorrow.