On Procrastination

There is a fine line between a procrastination and laziness. Sometimes, the line is invisible; but aren't all lines just figments of our obsessive-compulsive imaginations that have to put black-and-white boundaries on the gray everything?

Enough of that.
Back to the 'fine line'.

When you procrastinate, you avoid doing something in the firm conviction that you will be able to do it later just as well or even better than if you do it now. Laziness, on the other hand, is when you avoid doing something in the firm conviction that it is just not worth the energy getting up. Many people do not know this distinction. In fact, many posers pretend to be legitimate procrastinators when in reality, they are mere lazy bums.

I am, of course, a lazy procrastinator.
Now, to see procrastination in action.

When I was taking my Biopsychology exams, I realized that I had crossed the line into laziness when I had nothing to write. I had studied the night before but it amounted to nothing. If I had been a procrastinator, I would have had at least something to write since it follows that a good procrastinator is a good crammer. But there I was with nothing to write.

And then the drums started.

Real drums, not hallucinations or metaphors or creative narrative *ahem* enrichments but pure, hard, unbelievable realism: drums. Some drum group, actually, trying out a new beat that was actually a simple repetition progressing in tempo, going faster and faster and faster...

Now, when you're staring at an exam booklet and realize that the neurons in your head are staring dumbfounded just like you, the drums can really affect you. Especially when they get really, really, really fast and your head is running around in circles trying to find an answer that just isn't there.

That's when I realized that I'm going to have to be a better procrastinator.
(And a better crammer.)
That's when I resolved to read my textbooks in a procrastinatory fashion.

That was last week.
Now, it is this week and I have an exam tomorrow.
And my textbooks continue to gather dust (a trick I taught them).

Instead of studying (since I don't study on afternoons) I work in the office. A very responsible thing to do. But since I am trying to live the procrastinator's ideal, I called in sick (I said I had exams) and did something that I shouldn't be doing.

I'm writing this essay, which I was supposed to write on Monday. With the exams, this essay has slid down the heirarchy of importance and is now allowable procrastinatory activity.

Now, with all this forcibly freed time, I should at least be trying to write my contest piece instead of this essay. But since that is of prime importance, it can be delayed for a later date.

I continue down the abyss and do the most procrastinatory thing I can think of: instead of writing this essay, I read random articles at Wikipedia (have you heard of the infinite monkey hypothesis?).

And then, five minutes before I log-out, I write.
(Lazy people would have just left without writing.)

Hence, this essay.
Procrastination in progress.