Columns, Opinion

FONTANA: Destination procrastination

All aboard who’s going aboard. Tickets, please! It’s just about time we get on to the Dawdling Express, set to leave Lollygag Station at approximately never p.m. This train is on an every stop route indirectly headed, in the most roundabout way possible, not so straight to – you guessed it – Destination Procrastination. It’s a magical land filled with ample amounts of downtime, various meaningless activities and an abundance of joy. Because who wouldn’t be happy in a world without deadlines?

Some scientists and fanatics believe that this place may hold the key to immortality. Granted, in this wondrous country there are no finished products, no consumable foods, and well, absolutely nothing. No sports for watching, Facebook for stalking or even places for walking. Just a passively under-zealous drive to sloth your life away. Doesn’t it sound grand?

Suddenly, I can now appreciate my sister’s and a good chunk of the world’s obsession with actually getting things done. Without their enslaving OCD (Obsessive-Completion Disorder), I fear that the world may have already collapsed in upon itself. Yet, even Disney’s attempts to scare us guerilla procrastinators out into to the open through its devious subliminal messaging in “Wall-E” has failed utterly and so our dominant genes continue to infiltrate the oblivious populace slowly but surely, making procrastination increasingly popular. Slug may just be the new sexy.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder from where this incessant need to procrastinate has arisen, or more importantly, why? Procrastination dates well back to the beginning of time when it took God seven whole days to create everything that he could have simply thrown up well beyond the boundaries of time altogether. We, the people, just happened to be lucky enough to be made in His own procrastinated image. Since Eve ate the apple, well, let’s just say that humanity has perfected the art of frivolity.

Ever heard of the Dark Ages? It made the Guinness Book of World Records for humanity’s longest game of monkey in the middle. They just happened to be throwing around knowledge, development and all that is growth and advancement in the world. Despite even nature’s attempt to halt our perpetual procrastination, the bubonic plaque simply gave us another reason to stop what we were doing and run around aimlessly in mindless fear for our lives. Heck, we were even able to invent a game for children out of it, involving running in a circle (also known as, getting nowhere) and then falling down and not moving (also known as sleeping). So much for relying on nature to correct our mistakes.

Despite this virus we’ve been fighting since the dawn of time, I believe this very column may hold the solution. While I often spend my week attempting to not ponder over my next article idea, hoping that lighting might strike me on the head and my brain would be shut down and lost forever, pushing all the dreadful deadlines far, far away, come Sunday night (and perhaps a small, wee bit of Monday too) I find my fingers miraculously typing away with a profound, spontaneous expulsion of words and successfully coherent sentences. And thus, my column rises from the ashes. Despite my attempts to dilly-dally away, somehow my delayed dilemma becomes the best, most wonderful and thoughtful gift a boy could ever ask for. It’s like freaking Christmas every Sunday. The very bane of my existence becomes the birth child of my frivolous procrastination of other, not so important “things” like homework or sleep.

And so, as college students have proven time and time again, deadlines just aren’t cutting it. And the harsher the deadline, the more we grow in fear of it and push it away. Rather, the solution resides in that very fear.

I propose a unique perspective. I believe it’s time organizations begin creating fictitious deadlines, dates that despite their apparent place hanging in the balance between life and death, will come to fruition on a completely normal days with no unordinary consequences. Now, this is not for the purpose of pushing people to get there work done earlier, but rather of creating jobs and assignments that appear so monstrous that people will do anything to get out of these Godzillas’ way, even complete their other work.

While the hardy veteran and thoroughly cultivated procrastinator “deep” inside my subconscious is screaming at me and trying to stop my freedom-fighting fingers, we all know who’s in control here.

And so I leave you with this one final thought:

(David was unable to finish this article for personal, medical reasons. The CDC is dodging our questions on the matter and has been very reluctant in releasing any public information.)

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