Procrastination At It’s Finest

AHHHHH!! I can’t believe that it is 9:18 pm and I still have the longest to do list. I’ll tell you what, I am the queen of procrastination. This is the conversation I have with myself many times. It goes a little like this:

“Ok, Steph, this is the time you are going to have everything done (anything can fit in here). You are going to be ready. I don’t care what comes up. You can do this. I don’t care what you want to do, you will do what needs to be done. There will be no procrastination by me.”

Then in a blink of an eye it’s 9:23 pm the night before you are leaving for a trip with a HUGE to do this. I don’t know if it is the ADD in me or if procrastination is another issue I have. But, oh my, I’m OVER IT! Do you hear me procrastination?! I’m over it.

But here’s the deal, I’m not over it. Not really. As much as I hate it, it isn’t going anywhere. What I need to do is accept the fact that this is a part of me, not one of my better parts. Then I need to figure out how to be better about it. I need to either take things out of my to do list or throw that darn list away… Ok, not really! I kind of like my lists, even if they make me crazy at times.

So now it is 9:34 pm (I had to plug in electronics to charge and of course get me another piece of banana bread 😋). And this is what I need (or at least would like) to do:

• Finish this post because Wednesday is my post posting day. (I had started writing something else during nap time but wasn’t feeling it so I needed to switch gears.)
• About 9 other things regarding my blog (which I’m so not going to bore you with).
• Finish a load of wash
• Pick out my clothes
• Pack everyone’s clothes (The rest of the clothes for my family are picked out and laying on my bed. The big kids helped pick out their clothes earlier today and were so stinking cute about it.)
• Pack the toiletries
• Pack snacks
• Get out pack n plays and sheets
• Pack mattresses and sleeping bags
• Pack kid stuff for the car ride (My kiddos did pack their backpacks but I need to go through them to see what is in there. They get very excited to do this. It was done early this morning.)
• Get all electronics charged and packed
• Shower (Gross, I haven’t showered today and to be honest this one will probably not get done. Don’t judge. 🤫)
• Pack swimming stuff
• Pack up the car so we can leave bright and early (Haha, this probably won’t happen either.)
• Work out (wishful thinking)
• Say hi to my hubby who just got home from work
• Sleep (again, wishful thinking)

Now you may be wondering how in the world did you let all this go until tonight. Let me explain (ahem, let me tell you my excuses). I had great plans to pack my kids clothes on Monday night after they were freshly washed. But, you see I have this thing where clothes need to be put away before I can pack. Crazy, I know. My big kids fold and put their own clothes away. There was no way I was going to do that for them. They were in bed so it had to wait until Tuesday. That was a crazy day. We were hardly home and had a very late night. So again it had to wait. I just never got around to it today. So tonight it is. Procrastination!

I have a very limited supply of pants or capris that fit right now. So naturally I had to do a late night wash to have all three cleaned and ready to pack. I could buy more pants but that’s a whole other story. And not a fun one. I was going to have my kids to bed on time tonight. That would have given me about an hour to an hour and a half, depending on if I needed to nurse Miss N, to get the last few things packed. I could quickly pull out the mattresses, sleeping bags, extra pack n play, swimming stuff, electronics, toiletries, and snacks. Then when Hubby gets home from work we can hang out and chat while I do a short workout. After that I could work on blog stuff while he packed everything into the van. It was going to be a perfect plan. But, you guessed it, procrastination! And let’s be honest it was my kids fault a little too. Haha!

My sweet angles are young. They need attention, all at the same time. They sometimes are very hard. And of course they would have a hard day today and make it almost impossible to get anything done when they were awake. Which was all day because they don’t all nap anymore. I guess I could make my 6 year old nap… 😂😜 They do quiet time but Mr. E is a talker. His sisters are all spread out in their bedrooms and mine so he has me to himself. (This is another time I wish we had one more bedroom.) I have to tell him that it’s my quiet time too so we need to be quiet. Other times I just let him talk my ears off. 😊

There are times when I don’t feel bad about procrastinating. Those days I could care less. I don’t think I would be able to get anything done from my to do list on those days. The tender mercy is that I don’t care and the depression is over powering my mind. It is hard to think of anything else. This makes it extra hard to stay on top of things when I’m out of the funk. Or at least not in the big funk.

Even though I have had a life time of procrastinating and getting frustrated with myself it hasn’t seem to help the problem much. I could continue to get mad at myself or blame myself. That will only make matters worse. I have a feeling it’s going to be one step forward and a few steps back.

In the end I stopped working on blog stuff and got ready for our trip. It was more important at the time. It’s now Friday night. I can hear the kids cleaning up the huge amount of toys in the next room. I may have gotten this post out late, we may have left two hours later on Thursday. But no one died, we were not in harm. Those are some things I need to remind myself when I’m getting annoyed or frustrated with myself. After hearing my awesome therapist ask me is anyone going to die a few times I’m starting to ask them myself and then let some of the control go. And you know what? Procrastination didn’t kill me! That’s a win!

xoxo

Steph