Procrastination

I have been a procrastinator since I can remember.  Of course, as a little kid, you really only have things such as school work, and maybe room cleaning, to put off.  But I did it.  If it was required of me, I would wait until the last possible moment to start the task.  As I've grown up, I've expanded the practice to more and more applications.

I had a conversation about this recently with a teacher of my daughter's with whom I have a lot in common.  She claimed that the procrastination was a symptom of our perfectionism, that folks like us put off doing things for fear of getting it wrong.  Now I would suggest that perfectionism is about as maladaptive as procrastination, but that it is a trait that sounds somehow more praiseworthy.  I therefore liked Mrs. S's theory, and it even rings true in one or two categories of things that I routinely put off.  However, for the most part, I think my procrastinating has little to do with my perfectionism.  I believe, rather, that these behaviors have to do with my poorly developed self discipline.

I sometimes try to convince myself that procrastination is not a bad thing.  I tell myself I am simply choosing to do a task at a later time, and that in fact I perform better with the pressure of a fast-approaching deadline.  This makes me sound in better control than I am, and is comforting, but it isn't true.  Procrastinating stresses me out.  I don't really like it.  But I guess I'd generally rather read a book.  So it is indeed a choice, but not a carefully thought out, nor a sound, one.

One interesting consequence of having procrastinated for 30 plus years is that I now also become uneasy on the rare occasion when I am prepared well in advanced.  I don't quite trust myself to get things completed ahead of time.  I assume I've overlooked something or have done it poorly.  (Here is my perfectionism shining through.) Lack of stress can just make me nervous.  Yes, I need help.

I am in the middle of such a situation.  We are moving in about 10 days.  At the beginning of the summer, I was nervous.  I had a lot to do, and not much time to do it in.  Then I had a medical hiccup that took about two weeks out of my life.  Then I had one week feeling well, and was off to Girls' Camp for a week with my oldest girl.  I came back and was constantly on the verge of an anxiety attack.  Now there was way too much to do and not nearly enough time.  But I pressed on, and with the help of my mom tackled the rooms and closets that were going to be the most difficult for me to pack.  Larry has spent a bit of the week working on packing up his stuff that I'd have no idea how to sort through.  The end result is that since Friday afternoon, I have felt quite comfortable about the state of the packing.  

That's good, right?  Well, mostly.  Except for this background gnawing in my gut that I must be misjudging the amount of remaining work.  If only I'd procrastinated, I'd be CERTAIN that I had more work than time.  See how much more comforting that would be?  I hate uncertainty.  

I really do need to get some help.  Maybe someday I will.

The Move

I'd ask you all to indulge me for a moment while I make a very non-observational, non-humorous, entirely self-gratifying post.  But I don't need to.  It's my blog, and I'll do what everyone else seems to do every day for one post if I feel like it.  

We are leaving for Idaho in just under a month.  Time is pretty short.  I lost almost two weeks of it in bed suffering from a lumbar puncture gone bad.  I'm nearly recovered now, and I'm working on getting us packed with a little help from my friends.  Next week I'll be at Girls' Camp with our stake.  So Larry will need to take over the packing for a few days. When I return, I'll basically have two weeks.  Scary.

The last few weeks of school, people kept asking questions such as, "Have you sold your house?"  "Is it on the market?"  "Do you have a place to live in Boise?"  "Are you using a moving company?"  "Are you all packed up?"  The answer to all of these questions except the moving company one was "no."  For the moving company it was, "I think so, I'm not sure, we haven't looked into it yet."  Things are underway now, though, and I'm glad to have information to report.  Ask me what you will.

We put our house on the market.  One guy has come to see it.  And for our little mountain community, that's not too bad.  Selling a house here is more like finding a spouse than in the valleys.  You need to make that love connection.  We have a very rare house up here, and we need to find a buyer who wants just this.  We do hope it will sell sooner, rather than later, of course.

We also had two moving companies come out and give us quotes.  I think we picked one.  I'm not sure, that was during the time I was down.  We will pack, and they will load and move. About 1/3 of our stuff will be delivered to a rental home, and the rest will go into storage until we moving into the new house.  So as I pack, I am labeling boxes either long or short term.  Larry thinks this is confusing, since "ST," for short term, looks to him like it would stand for storage.  So we will be putting color-coded stickers on them, so as not to confuse movers.

They started excavation for our basement this week.

  

This means that we will have a permanent place to live, hopefully by Christmas.  I have to say that one positive thing about having to move twice, is that we'll get to watch the house be built, I'm guessing from stick stage.  That is fun.  We've done it before, with a McMansion we had in the valley.  But #3 was 2 and #4 was a newborn, and so they don't remember at all.  Plus, this is a custom home, designed just for us, and it somehow seems a little more exciting.

Larry has been in Boise this week, and secured us a rental home.  I cannot believe how cheap the rent is up there.  I would say it's almost half what it would be here.    

  

The inside is nice, and according to Larry, doesn't smell, which I guess he was worried about.  

So we are ready for a new adventure.  We've been in California for 14 years, which will sound like a long time to some, and like nothing to others.  For me, it's been about all of my adult life, so it feels like a long time.  I'm not too sad yet.  We'll see what happens on moving day.  The kids are excited to go now that school is out and  a lot of their good-byes are already said. 

There was a whole list of things we wanted to do this summer before moving.  Almost none of it will happen.  But that's okay.  I also feel like I don't have enough time to get my house packed up.  But that's okay too, because it will happen, pleasant or not.  One month from today it will be all over.  And then we will begin ...