Everyone has their own unique way of doing things and some people, more than others, embrace a lifestyle of just going with things as they happen. In my case, and that of most people at some point, it involves showing up somewhere at a time that even you didn't see coming. So to all of you fellow procrastinators and untimely people, here's what exactly goes on when you tend to be late 99 percent of the time.
1. You try not to be super late the first time you’re meeting someone.
2. But by the fourth of fifth time, whomever you’re meeting usually shows up late to accommodate you- and is still early.
3. There’s a scale of being late: what someone expects, what you expect, and what will probably end up actually happening.
4. No matter how many times you tell yourself, "This time I’ll be on time!" it doesn’t actually end up that way.
5. But even if the universe finally aligns and you might be early, some catastrophe happens.
6. Or someone just has to talk to you.
Or something breaks. Or your car won’t start. Or you just couldn’t get out of bed.
7. You start to think about all the things that make you late, and realize they revolve around basic functions -- like eating or sleeping or talking too much.
8. After all, you don’t even need to start getting ready to go out until the absolute last minute... right?
9. And when you try to look nice, you lose your sense of time. As if it was there, anyway.
10. People try to tell you to pretend you need to arrive at an earlier time; sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t.
11. Or convince you to set your clocks ahead.
12. Getting to work means that you slide in exactly when your phone says time, and no earlier.
13. If there was a prescription drug to instill a sense of time in you, your parents would make you take it every day.
14. But chances are, you picked up the habit from them.
15. When the sky falls, and you do show up early, you get so annoyed waiting for other people to arrive.
Then you realize it’s because people always have to wait for you.