WordPress Daily Prompt: Now? Later?

We all procrastinate. Website, magazine, knitting project, TV show, something else — what’s your favorite procrastination destination?

My orchids seem to procrastinate most of the year. I buy them in flower, with a few buds. The buds stop procrastinating when they are settled at home and with the motherly care I give them they blossom. When they are finished flowering I keep them, hoping and waiting for the next flower season, but they procrastinate and procrastinate. When the leaves begin to wilt, turn brown and stalks shrivel I know that there will no longer be procrastination, they give up and die. So beware humans, it could be us.

I do not procrastinate: procrastinate? The first time I heard this word I was busy with the dictionary. Perhaps it is one of those Americanisation’s, something invented across the big pond? Perhaps I was not listening in my English class at school or perhaps it was a word that never existed in my vocabulary or country.

I think I was procrastinating constantly when I was younger, but blame it on my youth. There were so many more important things, like listening to beat music, catching up on the latest fashions and generally hunting for Mr. Right. After meeting Mr. Right, I discovered I had no time for procrastinations. I was changing diapers, feeding babies and ensuring that I was not living in squalor and general chaos. I was proud. I did not have squalor but a well ordered, clean organised chaos.

As I no longer procrastinate, I have no favourite procrastination destination. I worked in a company in the export department. You do not procrastinate when a customer somewhere at the other end of the world is waiting for a machine part. His complete factory is laying still. He cannot finish the job because some forgetful person has procrastinated about sending his badly needed tool. As this person could have been me, I decided not to procrastinate because I would be in danger of losing my job.

Imagine George Clooney wanting to star in his new advertising film for a favourite coffee sort, and the expected coffee does not arrive because the lady organising the coffee parcel procrastinates. Not only has she lost a chance of meeting George Clooney for a cup of coffee, but George Clooney cancels his contract with Nespresso the coffee company. There is no place for procrastination in the modern world of stress.

I do not procrastinate, because at my age I no longer need to procrastinate. When you are referred to as “The old Mrs. Angloswiss” you no longer bother to procrastinate. Your fate is sealed, you are beyond procrastination. You are verging on a demented condition, forgetfulness, and are excused. It is an enjoyable life, freed from the burden of remembering to do things you should. You are excused.

My felines regard me with yearning eyes when their food bowls are empty not to mention the black looks if water is scarce and the accompanying threatening meows. I have no chance to procrastinate. The feline police ensure that I do not forget or put it off until I feel like it.

If I am hungry I cook and eat. My bills are all programmed in the computer, so no chance of putting them off. Every day the man in the WordPress t-shirt sends me a reminder that the daily prompt has arrived, thus procrastination is not possible from my side. I sometimes have a feeling that he does a little procrastination when the prompt might be late, but he is excused. It is a stressful job arising each morning studying a new prompt idea. If he procrastinates, Mrs. Angloswiss is there on the forum with her complaint to remind him that just because he was celebrating a new look or new grid idea the evening before,  it is no excuse to procrastinate.

Perhaps a new member of the WordPress committee joined and she or he was welcomed with a new t-shirt, a few welcome drinks and taken out to a meal the evening before. This is no reason to procrastinate with the next daily prompt. Life must go on, the empty bottles must be thrown out and the ash trays emptied. Daily prompt procrastination cannot be excused, there are millions, thousands, hundreds, about 100 victims waiting for a new daily prompt to fulfil the purpose of their blogging lives.

Mr. Swiss has now decided to mow the lawn. There was a little procrastination involved, although he finds we cannot have an unkempt lawn with weeds and long grass. We are Swiss and Swiss have neat lawns, so no time for lawn procrastination. 

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Procrastination

What have you been putting off doing? Why?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us TIME.

Can you see it, the Swiss Railway Clock at my local station of Solothurn. This is not just a clock, but THE clock adopted by Apple iPad/iPhones. So you see Switzerland is not just the country of numbered bank accounts, gold bars, gnomes, cows and mountains. We have a clock, the clock. And now down to business.

It is a funny thing with that word “procrastination”. I first saw it on web sites used by some colleagues over the pond in the States. Apart from having issues (problems) and going to the movies (cinema) they did some procrastinating in between. I never really bothered about the word and thought it was some sort of complaining. We all complain otherwise we would not be human. Now I discover – thankyou WordPress – that this is the way to do a job you do not want to. Just procrastinate it, push it on one side, forget it and with luck no-one will notice.

I found procrastination was the ideal solution when the boss at work asked if you had dealt with a particular job that you actually did not want to do, had not yet found the solution on how to do it, or it just plain “sucked” – one of my WordPress colleagues from over the pond came up with this word in a blog, most useful. I almost forget it, from my Beavis and Butthead fan club days. So yes, I procrastinated with the work: said to boss “I will have a look”. Being a boss with other things on his mind, this answer seemed to suffice and he we usually forgot the whole thing. Should he remember, it was so long afterwards that the solution had found itself.

Since becoming a golden oldie I am not supposed to procrastinate any more. I have nothing to do all day; I have no work, just sit at home and write blogs, read a book, read magazines, knit. I had to strike that one, my knitting days are gone, due to a few aches and golden oldie pains and still waiting for the first grandchildren. Although they will  probably want the modern onesie dress with the studs, all made in stretch modern material. So there I am sitting around wondering what to do with my luxury life.

At the beginning of my retired days I did not procrastinate so much. I had a newly found freedom and caught up on all the chores that I had procrastinated throughout my working life and that was 35 years in Switzerland.. You do not just clean windows now, but the frames are cleaned at the same time. There are kitchen cupboards to be scrubbed. What about the tiles in the bathroom, let them shine again. Curtains to be washed (here I am lucky, I do not believe in curtains, more trouble than they are worth) I have blinds. Oh, yes the blinds must be cleaned – a wash down with the hose outside (live on the ground floor). So after a month or so all these procrastinated things were no longer being procrastinated, they had been completed.

Did boredom set in? No, you cannot just do these forgotten chores once after retirement. I still have a few years left (I hope), so these procrastinations must be upheld, dealt with regularly, otherwise we return to the working days when everything was either not dealt with or fitted in once a year some time.

At the moment it is summer and living mainly outside, the apartment stays more or less ok, although just a minute. The hedge surrounding the garden grows. Mr. Swiss cut it the last time, but since has had an attack of the dreaded back problems – we all get them in age, but the can lead to immobility. A new plan had to be found. It was discovered, procrastination abolished. I found I was shopping on my own, back in the planning and logistic department on a home basis: compiling shopping lists and having conversations with the butcher and other sales personnel in the supermarket. I even began to drive the car on a regular basis instead of only a once a week trip to my Tai Chi training sessions. At emergency times like this I am grateful for an automatic gear change – just have to sort your feet out.

Needless to say the procrastinated garden hedge is still growing, but next week I have decided to attack it with the electric saw – no problem. It is all a matter or organisation, in between shopping, cooking and eating and my golden oldie sleeping session daily. If I abolished the sleep recovery therapy I would have two hours more to deal with the stuff I procrastinate about, but I decided when the retirement happy hunting grounds arrived, that life would now be what I want to do and not what I have to do.

Today is Sunday, not that it has to be a procrastinating free day for some reason, but all the shops in Switzerland are closed, you are not allowed to mow the lawn, or any other noise making work outside, so today I cannot even do things that I should do, through procrastination.

Tomorrow is Monday and the procrastinating week begins and tomorrow afternoon I will cut the hedge. There is one small problem, our super-efficient weather forecast has predicted rain. As rain has been scarce for the past week, we expect something deluge similar. As Mrs. Angloswiss does not want to develop webbed feet or an attack of a common cold, I think I will have to postpone the work until Tuesday afternoon. Oh, I forgot, Tuesday afternoon is reserved for Tai Chi.

Wednesday? I might fit it in some time around five in the afternoon, but it could wait until the end of the week really. Oh this procrastination is such a stress.

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