Procrastination

I am a chronic procrastinator. I try to change it, but more often than not, I end up using that frantic energy to get things done at the last minute. I also often spend that frantic time cursing under my breath, snapping at my children, and swearing to myself that I will change my last-minute ways. It's an on-going internal conflict for me. Functioning best with that adrenaline rush, but at the same time feeling bad about it and wanting to change it.

In the past few months,however, I have seen some of the positive benefits of procrastination in the garden. The first incident happened in our back yard. When we first moved here our backyard was just a fenced in box of grass. At least it appeared that way, until we didn't mow the grass for several weeks and suddenly I noticed bright green shoots growing up around the perimeter. The mowing still didn't get done and those shoots then turned into big green clumps. I began to suspect they were bulbs of some sort. And sure enough by December our backyard had a beautiful display of paperwhites.

The second procrastination pay-off: letting our arugla bolt. We didn't eat it quickly enough and we now have a pot full of pretty white blooms (see the pic?) which will hopefully re-seed and produce more on its own. Neither one is an earth shattering discovery or life-changing event, but rather a good reminder to myself: Letting things go isn't always a bad thing.It is highly unlikely that I will ever truly be an early or an overly-organized person, but I am trying to embrace the fact that I will be the person who enjoys the unmown paperwhites and the bolted arugula blooms. Now if only I could find some positive benefits to letting the dishes or the laundry go....sadly those piles of procrastination never seem to grow anything except mold or mildew.