I'll Do It Later

Or why I should never be allowed in a craft store.

I am a professional procrastinator. My skills are amazing actually. I can put off doing anything until much much later. Sometimes I may never even do it all, I'm that good at procrastinating.

When I was in school, I'd start to study and then get distracted by something more fun. Like laundry, or cleaning, or doing the dishes, or making cookies or sleeping or watching TV. At work, I would return phone calls and e-mails, or file or research rather than working on that big project.

Everything would get done and get done well. But it would never get done early, it was always at the deadline. I do some of my best work under pressure.

Take right now for example, right now I should be cleaning. We are having guests staying with us this weekend. In fact they will be here in something like 60 hours. I need to pick up, vacuum, clean the kitchen, clean the bathroom, do some laundry (so they'll have sheets and towels) and move some stuff we've been storing in the guest room.

I've known they were coming for a long time. I could have done this a while ago, but of course I didn't. It rained all weekend, I could have done it then. But I didn't.

What did I do instead? I decided we needed to get new kitchen chairs and recover the dining room chairs we've been using in the kitchen. So I went shopping. They didn't have the chairs I wanted at World Market so I bought a scarf, some halloween decorations and some Christmas ornaments.

Then I went to the fabric store to get some samples for the dining room chairs. Ooooh they have yarn at the fabric store. I decided to crochet myself a new sweater. So I bought all sorts of yummy yarn and new crochet hooks (because they were purple and mine aren't).

So right now, less than 60 hours from our guests' arrival, I have not done any cleaning or laundry or anything. I have not gotten new chairs for the kitchen. I have not recovered the dining room chairs. But I have crocheted half a sweater.

(And did I mention I started this post yesterday? I have a problem.)