I believe in procrastination. For me, procrastination is somewhat embodied in the imaginary place which I have come to refer to as “Procrastination Café”. It is a cozy little place where you can do anything you want to do, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, or can simply do nothing at all. We’ve all been there and whether you frequent it regularly or simply drop by every so often when you just don’t want to do anything doesn’t matter. As for myself, I am a regular. I am well aware of the all of the negative ramifications of such a lifestyle but as with everything in life, there is a bright side that merely waits to be found. I recently discovered this Brightside.
I have struggled with my lethargic nature for many years but in the middle of my senior year of high school, the culmination of years of flagrant disregard for my future dropped down on me like a ton of bricks. Somewhere around my freshman year I realized that if I didn’t do all of the things I had to do then I had a lot of time to work with for the things that I wanted to do. This continued for the next couple of years until the end of the first semester of senior year. It was then that I came to find out that I had a cumulative G.P.A. of 1.3 and was in serious jeopardy of not graduating and not going to college. In that last semester of senior year, I worked harder than in all the rest of my school years put together and did the impossible. I brought my G.P.A. up to a 2.0. Nobody thought that it could be done at all, let alone be done by me. But I had a leg up on everyone. All of that time spent in Procrastination Café taught me the ability to work well under immense pressure. It also taught me the value of improvising and flying by the seat of your pants. After all, isn’t most of life spent just winging it? Ironically, I believe that by putting off and/or skipping all of the things that were supposed to prepare me for life actually taught me more than I could have ever learned from doing them.
I, now a college student, am still afflicted by laziness but am done being at war with myself over it. I accept myself as I am because I believe that if you cannot overcome your bad habits then why not embrace them and learn from them. The sooner you can accept yourself for who you are, good and bad, the sooner you can get past your flaws and find your strengths. And sometimes you find them in the most unexpected places. And I believe that it you can find your most valuable strengths in the places where nobody but you would look. Perhaps Procrastination Café has something more to teach me yet.