Procrastination is never really a proud characteristic to have. The actual idea of procrastination even drives me insane to even think about. I find myself struggling more and more to keep up with the deadlines of my Odyssey articles. Odyssey is basically one huge blog for everyone around the world. The basic requirements every week are a 500 or more word article on anything I would like to write about. The articles at first were always easy to hand in on time, but then Saturday’s started approaching faster each and every week. I applied for the position of the content-creator in mid-June and passed both the interview and application process. The first few weeks I handed in everything on time and even early some weeks. Suddenly, my everyday life started to make it harder and harder to keep my mind on this one simple task. My early admission at college had begun, and so did my Boces program. I felt my energy being drained day by day. My articles went from being handed in on Wednesday’s, to being written and handed in on Friday night. This was not okay at all, I needed to change this if it was the last thing I did.
I was starting to believe that I didn’t really care about my work anymore. This was one big lie, my writing was one reason I was finally able to share my stories and real-self. This feeling of doubt led to me eventually working less in everything that went on in my daily life. Time was slowly ticking away every day, but I still felt trapped. My mind started to become nothing but blank; that was when I truly felt nothing anymore. What was the reason of even writing if I’m not even good enough for a simple deadline? My articles were turned in a day late, my workout schedule slowly stopped, along with all my motivation. No amount of timed reminders would help the way I felt inside. As the weeks went on, I found myself struggling with almost every deadline in my life. When I finally broke down into an emotional breakdown, I knew this was my wake up call - I couldn’t do this anymore.
Most of the time, time does heal all wounds; even for a procrastinator. As a procrastinator, time is one huge enemy that I never thought I could win against. There was once a term that stated “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer”, and that’s exactly what I planned to do. Time was my enemy, and I knew with enough determination and will-power, I could defeat it. I started to tell myself that if I didn’t hand in my articles on Wednesday’s, I wasn’t allowed to do anything fun over the weekend. Weekly reminders were no longer ignored, and the snooze button was thanking me. The thing about procrastination is that your mind knows the stress and importance of a task, but you just can't get the motivation to simply just do it. No matter what you ever do or say, you will never feel like you are good enough to finish one lousy task. Time had become an evil friend of mine, but I never lost hope... And I hope you don't either.
