Procrastination

"Procrastination is the deferment or putting-off of an action or task, usually by focusing on some other distraction (compare temporisation). It is Latin for "foremorrowing," or making some such of tomorrow." - Wikipedia

I am a master of procrastination.There are some benefits to it. Sometimes a task put off doesn't need to be done at all later, or the extra time you have to think about it allows you to be more efficient. Sometimes someone else does it. Its all good.

Having our own home for the past three years has introduced several tasks that need to be done throughout the year, and instead of doing them as they come up I have put my skills at procrastination to good use and let them build up to the point where they become "big jobs" that require a few hours of effort.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not lazy. I just have a lot of inertia. It may mean I'm hard to get moving, but once moving I can work as long and as hard as anyone else.

So there are several big jobs throughout the year. There is the breaking down of the cardboard boxes in the winter after new Years, where I trundle out to the freezing garage and cut up all the cardboard from Christmas and the rest of the year. There is the annual clean out the garage where I spend a Saturday or Sunday morning taking the mentioned cardboard to the yard waste depot along with several bags of leaves, grass clippings, twigs, scrap metal that has accumulated in the garage over the year. In the summer the job of cutting the grass and trimming the weeds is a constant battle that sometimes I lose, especially in August when the grass is supposed to stop growning but never does. This past year I once let the grass get so long in the backyard I had to go over it twice with the lawn mower because the first run simply could not get it all.

And in the fall, there is the important dual tasks of putting up the Christmas lights and sweeping the chimney. Usually I put these off until the snow is flying, there is ice on the roof, the temperature is so cold that exposed flesh freezes and burns, and Kim is forced to hold the borrowed ladder for me which only adds to the pain. That means I usually get them done sometime around Decemeber. But not this year, oh no! This past weekend, not even half way through November, I did both tasks in one day (as well as other around-the-house stuff... see? I'm not lazy, its just inertia). Saturday night we bought some poles for our chimney sweeper (usually I borrow from Greenbush) and Sunday I put up the new LED lights with fancy clips Kim found at Walmart (no droopy lights this year!) and swept the chimney. It was cold but not freezing, I got soot all in my mouth, ears, eyebrows, etc... but its done.

All the way downhill to Christmas now baby.