DISCLAIMER: The following essay is a submission for this month’s edition of the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s symposium, which is on the topic of procrastination. In the least shocking turn of events, I have procrastinated writing said essay on procrastination, and have now resorted to desperate measures. I considered all options, like any desperate man would, which was not limited to: hiring a ghostwriter, prostituting myself, begging on the streets of my city, blatant plagiarism, and substance-induced bender that culminates with me standing on the ledge of a bridge overlooking a river. Ultimately, I landed on none of those solutions, and decided to opt for a more tactical and reasonable resolution - asking a female companion of mine to write the essay for me. With the infinite grace of God, she accepted my proposal; because of this, the following words are not mine - at least some of them are not. Some of them are mine, however, and I will leave it up to you dear readers to decide which voice is Tony’s and which is the Greek girl’s; I do not doubt you will be able to discern between the two, but there may be portions where the lines are blurred, which is so often the case with my prose. Enjoy this new, experimental format of mine - there may be more to come.
As always, reader discretion is advised.
Unbelievable. Taking this assignment a little too seriously and putting it off for an uncomfortable amount of time, I find myself taking a stab at the whole writing process. I am not a writer. I don’t learn into fancy sentences or alliterations. I don’t get lost in the detail or struggle over words. If you readers across the internet couldn’t tell already, I’m not Tony [no shit] I’m the sucker that is helping bail this fucker out [fair point, although I wouldn’t necessarily view it as “bailing me out” – it’s more of a fun, interactive approach to the writing process. Experimental, if you will. I’ve always been a bit of a deep space explorer in the realms of my own universe, and this is simply uncharted territory]. Wanna know what’s worse? He’s going to edit whatever story I manage to pull out of my ass before the deadline.
[In the spirit of my general apprehension towards over-editing a piece of prose, I will actually not do this - I believe all works of literature are unfondled Edens of perfection, and should be kept in such a way that preserves the rawness and originality of the writer. No need to worry, dear friend, I will not edit whatever story you manage to pull out of your ass; in fact, I may add intentional typos and misused words just to reign chaos down upon you].
Trying to write something of merit is difficult. Trying to write something within in a clear defined chunk of time is worse. TRYING to write while someone is literally looking over your shoulder is down right nonsense. How am I supposed to write in these conditions? Alas here we go.
[A few things worth mentioning here. First of all, she clearly has not read my essay on operating in difficult conditions, and I will take full responsibility for not sharing my good word with the rest of humanity. Soon enough, I will have her penning poetic masterpieces the morning after a late night of degeneracy and debauchery – if not, my life is but one giant failure. Secondly, what a misleading intro that was. She says she’s not a writer, and then she goes ahead and provides us an acute and sharp observation on the nature of word craftsmanship. Which goes to show you that most everyone on this planet has an internal voice worth singing to your biggest fans. I’m convinced that the greatest heuristic for determining if someone has writing potential or not is if they explicitly say “I am not a writer”, or if they are hesitant to share their unpublished work in the beginning stages of their career, like I was, and like so many of you reading this were as well. It takes some real self-awareness and humbleness (which I have already grown out of) to recognize that your own work may not hold up to the peers around you who have been sharpening their proverbial swords for years and years. Perhaps all it takes is an eleventh-hour deadline to shine – but I digress.]
Humans are one of the only creatures to deny themselves constantly and repeatedly of what they need [she’s a biology nerd, if you haven’t already figured that out]. We find some sick sense of self fulling torture in screwing ourselves over. Ever put an assignment off until the last second? [Yes] Claiming that you work better under pressure? [Hell yeah brother!] Ever deny yourself the ability to eat? [This is starting to sound like a sleazy infomercial for a crummy product that you will use once and inevitably toss to the back of the kitchen drawer with the incessant questions]. Perhaps one of the most interesting way we deny ourselves is common aliment that plagues us now is our ability to deny ourselves sleep. I am not just talking about staying up past your self-imposed bedtime of 9pm and pushing that boundary a little further to midnight. I am talking about when you are already undeniably so tired that the thought of your head crashing into your memory foam pillow is the most delicious thought. Yet, the moment when you finally jump into bed you don’t sleep. You scroll on your phone, you watch Netflix, you read, or you do just about anything but give into that biological urge to go to fucking bed. Why? All for what? Why do we constantly put off what we have access to? Because it feels good to have that warped sense of delayed gratification.
[The final few sentences of this paragraph bring up an interesting point that is worth exploring further. My female companion mentioned offline to me (we are currently enjoying some beverages in her candle lit living room as we discuss this topic in detail. What a life man.) that there may be physiological implications behind the urge to procrastinate – for whatever reason, you have failed to adequately fatigue yourself, both mentally and physically, throughout the course of the day; therefore, you are unable to properly rest, and end up unintentionally procrastinating the thing your body needs most – rest. I’m sure you’ve all heard this theory before, because you are intelligent, driven readers who fail to sleep well when a day is lost to distraction and directionless toiling. And I would tend to agree; the nights I lay with eyes wide open are the nights I wonder what could have been.
But I have another theory – serial procrastinators are fucking junkies (takes one to know one). And what I mean by this is that procrastination is fun – it is a creative, destructive, and addictive way of tapping into those reserves of adrenaline that our bodies so generously store, like a hospital stockpiled with IV drip morphine, and a way to feel something in a world that lacks the ability to feel. I vividly recall a late night I had back in the winter of 2012; young Tony was but a wee freshman in high school, arrogant and smug as always, and balls deep into procrastinating a poetry project that was due the next day. I don’t recall how late I was awake that night – my guess is my head didn’t hit the pillow until 3 or 4 AM, but I do know that my face was altering between manic smiles and depressed frowns, and at one point, I no doubt felt like the Joker, desperately sinking into the tar pit that is insanity, hoping one day that a speculating archeologist would one day uncover my remains. One enjoyable aspect of this escapade was that I had a brother in arms who was joining me in this self-flagellation procrastination journey; one of my good friends who was in the same English class as me was also in the same predicament as me, finding himself up a creek with no paddle, needing to pull off an eleventh-hour miracle in order to turn something in for a grade. We exchanged texts, emails, calls, and voicemails during this night, and at one point we were so delirious that we were communicating through Google Docs. Despite the slap-happy silliness that was at play here from the sleep deprivation and caffeine overdose, we both managed to finish with just a couple of hours to spare. Not only that, but in my humble opinion, I think we both managed to produce some quality poetry in those final hours; for example, my poetry titled ‘Procrastination’, which pasted at the bottom of this essay for your reading pleasure, is not terrible for a last-minute, shoddily written, half-assed attempt at free verse – maybe because it was topical. Or maybe our work was above average because we were competent writers in the first place, and the procrastination aspect had nothing to do with the quality of work. This is a question I cannot answer, but I do know that when I rose for school the next morning, running on just a few hours of disrupted sleep, I felt like a million bucks knowing that the job had been completed, and I had saved my kittens from the burning house.]
Day two of trying to embody the struggling writer [no such thing]. I find myself really getting into character here. I have my cute mushroom shaped mood lamp setting up the atmosphere in a creative warm light. I have my third cup of steaming creative juice to my right in my favorite mug. Here’s to hoping the latter guides my fingers to type well and type fast because the deadline is approaching here. After toying around I’ve settled on the angle I’m going to take here.
[Let’s just pause for a brief second and address the massive, gaping elephant in the room here…. is she a better writer than…. no, surely that cannot be the case! You know what, forget that I even entertained that shivering, highly theoretical thought. Carry on!]
In the 1920s my paternal great grandparents fled their family home during the conflict with Greece and Turkey. They took only what they could carry, locked up their house with a comically large metal key, and left for America. That metal key is one of the things that will be passed down to my siblings and I, at a time of my grandparents choosing. To most it's just a paperweight, to my family it’s a testament to our ability to withstand any hardships that come our way. Our ability to take what is given and shape it to our choosing. Our ability to fight for a better life for our children. Neither of my grandparents had it easy during their youth. Growing up during the depression, their parents scraped together all they could to feed their families, yet even though they had so little they would share with the other families in their surrounding neighborhoods.
Nearly a member of the centenarian population, my grandfather who shared all these stories has become afflicted with dementia. He lives in a blend of reality and fiction. A hybrid world between the past and the present. We always spoke about taking the time to compile all the family history but never got around to it. Now all those stories are lost. No one could tell them quite like he did. It’s honestly something that I will never forgive myself for. Missing out on those opportunities to hear his stories and missing out on that quality time with him is something that I deeply regret.
Recently, my three sisters and I spent an evening going through all my grandmother's belongings. She had this beautiful mahogany jewelry box that my sisters and I used to look through as kids. Even though we had done so hundreds of times and already knew exactly what was in each drawer and each ring box we still enjoyed the treasure hunt. Each piece was examined with awe as if seeing it for the first time. Sure the jewelry was beautiful, but what we enjoyed most was the story behind each piece. This most recent dive down into the treasure troves of her jewelry box and memory lane was different though. More emotional, which is something that my grandmother does not do often. She is one tough cookie. She is not one to bend to the will of others and uses her wit and unyielding confidence as a weapon that could level anyone. So seeing her eyes glistening with the promise of tears spilling over her waterline was such a stark contrast to the woman I had grown up with. She had compiled a list of different pieces that she wished to gift to us when we were “older”. When I was younger I could not wait until that day, however now I find myself wishing we had waited longer. Each physical piece of jewelry seemed to also come with a piece of herself that she was passing down.
One specific piece of jewelry that she had held onto for me was my aunt’s wedding band. My aunt was my special person. She was born into this world with borrowed time. She was born with a heart condition that put her through many painful surgeries and other ailments. She in spite of it all pushed on and never once let it show how much it took for her to make it through the day. She was there for every success and knew exactly what to say to smooth out each rough patch. I miss her dearly. My aunt’s wedding band is something that my grandmother had worn each day since her passing, until her knuckles become too swollen and gnarled to wear the band. I now wear it to honor them both each day. I carry both of these strong unyielding women close to me and call on their talisman whenever I need a reminder of who I am and who I wish to be.
It seemed that once we had sorted through everything a sort of unspoken goodbye lingered in the air. It was almost tangible yet all of us were too afraid to acknowledge it. You see procrastination is something that is usually associated with a negative connotation. I however, wish that my grandmother had put off passing down her treasured family heirlooms and I wish that I had seized the opportunity to write down all that my grandfather had to say while I had the chance. I want to give everything back to her and tell her “no keep it. Not yet.”
[To be quite honest, I am borderline speechless after reading the last couple of paragraphs, and am failing to add any meaningful thoughts beyond the stark fact that the way she framed procrastination as a human emotion with deeply melancholic implications is nothing short of fascinating and heartbreaking. Often times, we associate the feeling of procrastination with a missed assignment or deadline. Or perhaps we feel we are procrastinating on starting to live our lives - but in this case, the feeling cut in the other direction - my companion wished her grandmother had put off doing a task that was symbolically a death of one generation and a birth of another.
And to address the point about her grandfather’s dementia, this is one I (and I’m sure many of you as well) can relate to very personally, as my late maternal grandmother too also spent her final days drifting in between reality and fiction. Perhaps I will one day write about the most Holy woman I knew (and will likely ever know), but for now, I will save that for a rainy, reflective day. I will stop my commentary for now, because I do not want to hog the spotlight (crazy, right) from those words above, which are as powerful as any as I’ve read in a long, long time. Enjoy it folks.]
Day three of being a writer and let me just say that I gave the above few paragraphs to Tony on Wednesday and he put it off until now (Friday at like 10:21 PM) to take a stab at editing it. Sorry “commenting on it”. As we all know this assignment is due on the 31st. I wonder how long my dear sweet counterpart is going to put off submitting this essay. Only time will tell dear reader. For now it was nice to be featured, thank you for taking the time to read this literary experiment. That’s all from me. Peace out.
[Actually, she is wrong - I put it off even longer, as it is now Saturday at like 10:21 PM, and I am just now putting the proverbial icing on this twisted, incoherent (but albeit delicious) piece of word cake. I do enjoy seeing her steal my own techniques, such as calling all of you readers “dear”, which of course will always reign true. But that’s my thing, not hers - oh well. They learn from the best, they say. Anyway, I do want to take this time to thank my female companion for bailing me out - yes, after a few thousand words, I will admit it. While I do know that I would have ended up submitting something regardless of if she was kind enough to lend me some of her time and effort, I am not certain it would have been of this quality, so I do appreciate that. Maybe I owe her dinner or something. White Castle does sound pretty good right now.
And to conclude on the topic of procrastination, I do not have much else to add. It is a strange human phenomenon, one that may be rooted in both physiological and mental deficiencies, and yet we all seem to resort to it in one way or another. While procrastination can be fun, adrenaline inducing, and pleasurable, it also comes with permanent and life-altering consequences. Choose wisely as to when and how often you procrastinate, as you one day may wake up on your death bed with no story to tell because you put it off until tomorrow.]
Onward,
Tony
Humble Wordsmith
Serial Procrastinator (but using it to his advantage)
Enjoyer of Female Companionship
Haphazard Editor
“Procrastination”
procrastination
the evil that lives inside all of us
late nights, coffee at five in the morning
lack of ideas
lack of motivation
lack of focus
lack of all three
it eats away your hours of sleep just like a termite eats away a soggy tree
it lives inside your soul just like that demon in The Exorcism
it creeps on you and sneaks up on you just like that child molester in the dark alley
the only way to cure this horrible disease
is a series of painful injections into your swollen peace of mind
or a triple bypass on your blocked stream of consciousness
or there is always the drainage of your infected irritation gland
either way procrastination is hard to overcome
and it may tear our brains apart
but the simple fact is that competition brings out the best in people
and procrastination is just a competition with time
By Tony, age 15, circa 2012