It seems a bit odd to me, but I tend to get more done in my day when I have more tasks to accomplish. Today for example, my schedule consisted of dishes, making dinner, and visiting with some church ladies. Oh, and write this blog entry. There is still a huge, growing pile of dishes in my sink, and I'm most likely going straight to bed after I finish this entry. On Sunday, however, I managed to vacuum, make a cake, clean the bathroom, shower, shave, attend three hours of church, cook beef stroganoff from scratch and host a small family get-together. So the less I have to do (especially when it's dishes--my least favorite chore), the more likely I am to put it off.
It's even worse now that I'm done with school and not working. There is no motivation to get anything done, since I just have to repeat all the same tasks week after week anyway. It helps me to have the pressure of teachers handing out assignments and grades to earn along the way, or an editor hounding me for my article. (Actually, my editor didn't really have to sit on me to get things done--it was pride in my work that motivated me to stay on task.) The best cure for procrastination is plain old discipline; for now, I'm simply lacking the motivation to enforce self-discipline.
A dream without a goal or vision for how to attain said dream is practically worthless in my view. Dreams aren't the same as hope, though. Hope is what gets you through the hard times, when nothing seems like it will be all right, ever again. Hope is believing that, despite your current situation, despite personal shortcomings or cosmic forces blocking your path, you will still attain happiness and satisfaction in life. Hope is something I hang on to with a dogged determination, even when there is no sign of a plan.
Speaking of dreams with no concrete plans, I started a binder during the summer. This binder contains clippings from magazines of everything I want in my future home. I've picked out color palates of carpeting, sofa styles, inexpensive and renewable flooring, kitchen layouts and all kinds of neat design ideas. It's been a way to help me stay patient as I wait for things to happen in my life. But I realized this week that I have no plan for obtaining my own home. I've always had goals for pretty much everything in my life. So that binder is now useless, until I make a plan.
People tend to procrastinate more out of fear than plain old laziness, from what I've seen in life. We fear failure, so it's easier to put off a task until the last minute--that way we can blame our failure on not having enough time to do said task. And if we succeed, well, then there was no need to worry about it so much after all. I like what Marianne Williamson had to say about fear:
Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually who are we not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people
won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine as children do.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And when we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
So stop being afraid of your own potential, and shine. Maybe I'll keep my dream house binder after all.
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