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Procrastination: My Dearest Enemy


Procrastination has been my number one enemy for as long as I can remember. Yet, I haven't been able to completely cut ties with it no matter how much I've tried to. It's almost like I have attachment issues with it like none other. Like, imagine me in the place of a wife who suffers daily due to an abusive husband (which is procrastination here) yet seems to never really muster up the courage to leave him because he's all she has and all she knows. Yeah, that's the relationship I have with this unruly habit of mine.

Once you take a look at the number of alarms I set to wake up in the morning, you'll understand the grave extent of this. Even though I wish to wake up at five in the morning and be a bit more productive and peaceful right from the day's start, I snooze and I stop, I snooze and I stop, all the alarms ranging from 5:00, 5:15, 5:30 right until 7:30. It's only then that I allow myself to fully wake and it's only by my 7.45's alarm that I actually get out of bed, shower, dress, skip breakfast and run to college for my first class at 8.30 a.m. It's hectic- my head aching with all the hurry burry right at the start of a fresh day. And frustrated with it, I promise myself that tomorrow will be different. And then tomorrow comes and I'm stuck in the same loop again. And I'm aware of the fact that this happens because I go to bed late. And once again, I promise myself every single day that I'll sleep early tonight. But then the night comes and I'm wide awake like an owl, either typing away on my laptop, talking to a friend, reading a book, scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest- everything and anything but actually sleeping and getting my well-needed rest.

And if that isn't the greatest proof of it, then my ever-valuable musical instrument that I forced my parents to buy for me, which now rests in a corner of my room back in my hometown, surely is. You see, I've always wanted to learn the guitar. I've always had an unreasonable obsession with the guitarists of every band I've ever listened to. And finally, I convinced my parents to let me learn it during the course of my tenth grade (poor timing, I realise) and they bought me a fairly expensive guitar which was a prized possession of mine for like three weeks- until I lost the initial interest and started putting off my lessons and my practise sessions. It's not that I hated it once I actually started learning it (which would've been a better reason to stop) but it's just that I never made time for it. Even when I could've picked that guitar up and practised atleast a few fret and finger exercises, I never got around to it. Thus, now it rests solitarily in that corner of my room, covered with dust and spider webs, untouched by any for months and months and months.

Even blogging was something I've wanted to do for an awfully long time but I just put it off for another day repeatedly. If it wasn't for the motivational challenge from a professor of mine now, I wouldn't have gotten around to doing it any time soon. Hence, it's quite clear how procrastination is dooming my greatest desires and how it's actually me who is feeding its fire. And how I wish I could really find a way to escape this exhausting loop I get stuck in because of it.

Yes, I do realise whining about it doesn't change anything and that I should actually put in effort to erase this lazy habit from my life. But as is the very name of my blog, please do allow me to babble so that I actually see this as a motivation for me to better myself. Because I want to. I really really want to. Every time I procrastinate doing something despite it being quite significant to me, I'm reminded of a particular quote by Benjamin Franklin which goes-

"You may delay but time will not, and lost time is never found again."

And oh lord, do I dread approaching the end of my life with the feeling that I never accomplished all the things I've ever wanted to. It's one of my biggest nightmares ever. To just survive and not really live- to just rush through the course of life, not really experiencing the beauty that each moment holds.

I don't really want to waste away my life. And if you, who is reading this, are someone who procrastinates too, together let us take a decision that we'll force this habit out of our lives and make every single second of it worthwhile.

Not from tomorrow. Not from the next week or the next month.

From now.

We'll live our lives to the fullest starting from now.

Because it's as Sydney J. Harris once said-

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

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