I’m not telling you about
my nectarine sitch to explain how desperately my vegie drawer needs a solid
clean – and I want to assure you that the rest of my house is very tidy and
hygienic – but because it illustrates in a really disgusting way just how
procrastination has taken hold of my life lately.
Here is a list of things I
need to do that I have been putting off for a month or so, some trivial, others
fairly pressing:
·
· Locking
in dates for my trip to New York this winter. (Note to self: it is officially
Autumn now. Autumn is followed by winter. That means winter is happening very
soon. Pull your finger out!)
·
· Getting
a new gym program. I am so booored by my workouts that I’m putting very little
effort in (counter-productive, no?). Some days I don’t even sweat. If I’m going
to drag my ass out of bed at 5.30am you’d think I’d be committed to making the
most of this time. But somehow the effort of booking a personal trainer to
create a new program for me keeps falling into the ‘I’ll do it next week’
category.
·
· Following
through on all the angel card readings I have promised people. It’s not that I
don’t want to do the readings, I just never quite get around
to locking them in.
·
· Sorting
out my accounting records. Yuck.
·
· Getting
some new meditation podcasts. I feel like I’m not going deep enough with my
meditations at the moment, and not getting the clarity I used to. This
something I really I need to address, or else I’m going to find my ability to
manage stress and the general challenges of everyday life will be seriously
hampered, and I’ll start getting stuck.
·
· Finishing
the two new short stories I’ve started and polishing two older ones to be
entered in competitions (one of my goals this year).
·
· Enrolling
in more volunteering projects (another key 2015 goal).
When I look at this list,
there’s a common denominator. It’s so obvious that Fear is at play behind my
decision to delay/avoid all of these tasks. I don’t want to tackle my
accounting records because they never add up properly at first and it takes
hours longer than it should and it’s frustrating and I’m scared I will realise
I’m too stupid to manage being self-employed. I don’t want to plan my New York
trip because I’m scared I will find that I can’t afford it, and have to ditch
the whole idea. I don’t want to find new meditation podcasts because I’m scared
they might be too hard, and will prove that, actually, I really suck at
meditation and will never improve. I don’t want to do more angel card readings
for my friends because I’m scared the messages I give people might not be
meaningful to them or will reveal stuff they don’t want to hear and they’ll
hold that against me and tell other people I’m crap and WHAT IF THAT’S TRUE?!
Wow.
In short, I’m scared I’m
not good enough. I’m scared I will fail. So basically I’m scared of the same
stuff you, and every other person on this planet, is scared of – and that’s why
I’m procrastinating.
But here’s the thing about
Fear: it only holds its power over you for as long as there is an absence of
proof that the things you are scared of could happen. And the only way to know
if that proof exists is to do what you’re scared of. Yuck. The good news:
through that process one of two things will happen: you will find that the
thing you were scared of was never really there, or you will find that you can
handle it. That’s a win-win situation.
I know all of this, and yet I continue to
procrastinate. I’m putting a stop to that right now. You all are my witnesses.
I’ve set myself a challenge to tick as many of these things off my list as I
can by April 16 (four weeks away).
I’ll start with that nectarine.
UPDATE: Since writing this post, my housemate has thrown out the rotten fruit and cleaned out the vegie drawer. Subsequent laboratory testing has revealed it was a peach, not a nectarine. All is well.
UPDATE: Since writing this post, my housemate has thrown out the rotten fruit and cleaned out the vegie drawer. Subsequent laboratory testing has revealed it was a peach, not a nectarine. All is well.