Go ahead, take a bite. To hell with that diet.
"Celebrate" procrastination with a bar of chocolate!
I could philosophize about my absence, but I'm afraid I'll bore you with nonsense. Instead, I'm going to write about putting things off. Most appropriately, I did not make it in time to write this on International Procrastination Day. Yes, this day most certainly exists and it was founded by a French guy, David d'Equainville. That's March 25th by the way, which is also Greece's Independence Day, the UN-recognized International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (which sounds suspiciously more official than d'Equainville's calendar addition), and most fittingly, my birthday...
Procrastination has been a vice all along. When I was a little girl, every night at bedtime, I would torture myself by putting off my daily “reconnaissance” routine, which involved searching under my bed, behind the curtains and inside the closet for “bad guys” (though I don't think I had a plan if I did actually find any “bad guys”). I would eventually do it after an hour of “contemplating” and end up falling asleep way too late. Today, this sometimes translates into putting off calling someone for work or pleasure, for reasons that are hardly reasonable... As far as I'm concerned (and probably most related self-help books out there agree on this), procrastination isn't a reasonable state. However, some people beg to differ.
Procrastination Day, as well as David d'Equainville's book Manifeste pour une journée reconductible – Introduction à la procrastination (Manifesto for a Day Put Off – Introduction to procrastination, soon to be published in English according to a Weird News article in The Daily Telegraph) aims to turn things around by celebrating the positive side of procrastination. From what I gather, “pressing pause” should help people “seize the moment”, think things through. I haven't read Mr. d'Equainville's book. But having read about its content, and from the point of view of a true and suffering procrastinator, I cannot even begin fantasizing about “celebrating” procrastination. The problem is I don't believe that putting off things is a remedy for acting hurriedly and thoughtlessly. I find it hard to believe that the two are related. Sitting back to think through an action or a plan does not fall into the realm of procrastination. It is part of the action or plan itself. As long as it's the right amount of time, which is quite a relative notion, but most people will agree that thinking about what food to cook for your family lunch should take less time than thinking about the dinner you're hosting for friends on Friday night. When the thinking process (if there is any thinking being done at all at that point) exceeds that right amount of time, then what you have is procrastination. And there's no need for celebration. Is there?
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