Why I Didn’t Write This Post Until Now

Procrastination and Perfectionism. You might think these two phrases are opposites on the spectrum. They aren’t. Procrastination isn’t necessarily only confined to unintelligent, lazy basement dwellers, it can also be present in the hearts and minds of highly intelligent, mostly put together people. I’m (hopefully…) somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but I most definitely am a procrastinator. I would always rather wait until the imaginary time where I am perfect at whatever I am procrastinating. But the truth is, no one has ever gotten good at something by avoiding it. No great speaker has gotten where they are by avoiding public speaking. No painter ever became an artistic genius by putting down their paintbrush until they simply became better. If you want to get good (or at least less terrible) at anything, you need to work at it.

In addition to that, sometimes we are just afraid of failing. Failing who? Not sure. At what? That’s not clear either. Just the vague spectre of failure, looming over the horizon is enough to drive many of us into a figurative bunker, hoping to wait out the storm, waiting for a time when there won’t be as much pressure on us, when either failure won’t occur or will matter less. But, speaking out of personal experience, when we run from the possibility of failure, we do not lessen our fear of it, but grow it. It snowballs and quickly gets out of hand. Sometimes we get caught up in our own image, and feel that to fail, even privately, could destroy “who we are”. So, instead of doing what is hard, and probably more meaningful, we take the easy way out. We aim low, keep quiet, and crush our goals and dreams in order to fit the present.

People have this tendency to put things off until this mythical future, where we have an unlimited amount of time to do whatever we want. In my case, its been “after school I’ll do that”, “I’ll have more free time after Christmas, maybe in summer”. The problem with this idea is that life doesn’t stop. Just because you haven’t got any plans for six months from now doesn’t mean that you won’t be busy in six months. Maybe you’ll change jobs, or move, or maybe you’ll have a new friend or significant other you will be spending a lot of time with. I know that I, personally, do not always spend my time productively. When I could be studying, reading, writing, working out, or even just finding something more enjoyable to do with my time,  I instead choose to spend an hour scrolling through Instagram and Facebook, or just pacing back and forth across my house, with headphones playing the same few songs over and over. Most of the time, I’m not even enjoying myself, but instead, just spending my free time. To enjoy oneself is not a bad thing, but to waste time on something that doesn’t enrich you, educate you, entertain you, or otherwise bring joy into your life is a very bad thing.

I have put off writing this post because I didn’t prioritise it and because I was afraid that I was going to fail. I have spent so much of time having big, vague, dreams about writing some grand piece of writing something that was eventually perfect, that I didn’t actually do anything. I spent time doing nothing, when I could have been doing this, or a million other good things. And it wasn’t even the fun kind of nothing.