THE PROCRASTINATOR

I am a procrastinator.   There, I’ve said it!  I rationalize this of course by telling myself and anyone who will listen that my shelved and waiting projects are because I like to be involved in things.  Life is too interesting to worry about my closets I tell myself.  It’s a wonderful way to justify avoidance.

The truth is I have boxes of things that have waited years to be sorted.  Thirty years of pictures, holiday memorabilia, old family treasures, work projects and files.  Each spring I promise myself that I will make this a priority next winter.

Part of me longs to unload, to simplify, have less stuff and another part loves holding on to this clutter of memorabilia and treasures and the history they hold.   The reality, of course, is of what value are these apparent treasures dumped in boxes on basement shelves.

I am challenged now with my decision to live in a co-op home.  I can no longer be spread over 1800 sq feet of just my stuff.  I will have to simplify myself into 380 sq feet.  There will be a basement though.  Have we reached consensus on that, I ask myself?  I sift through my mind for discussions on that topic.  How much space can I negotiate in the basement I wonder? I panic at the thought of the mammoth undertaking ahead.  I’ve moved before, of course, with boxes transferred from one basement to another and labelled with promises.

Stop there!  This thought breaks through the rising chatter anxiety creates in my head.  The winter of reckoning is here. There will be no more winters to procrastinate.   If not now when; there is no answering voice.  There is no when – only now.