Procrastinating has been my modus operandi for about twenty-nine years now (really thirty, but I’m putting that off). Since I was born two weeks overdue, I’ve been steadily progressing to the point where although all my clocks and watches are each set at somewhere between ten and twenty minutes fast, and randomized to keep me on my toes, I’m still never less than thirty minutes late to just about everything I ever get around to doing. It’s not that I’m particularly lazy, it’s just that I can always find something better to do than what needs to get done. I’m a terrific preparer, actually. I make a damn good list, and a lots of them. And I always have some project or another that’s theoretically “under way”. I’m not without ambition. For instance, I spend hours planning how I’ll spend the free time I’ll have after I become hideously wealthy. I’ve charted my road to early retirement, and I’m currently preparing a 3-D relief map of what my next ten years should look like. It’s transiting from the research phase to the finished state that I find problematic. If it weren’t for the hyper-adrenalized, panic fueled bouts of productivity that come in the last minute of each given deadline, I’d never get anything done.

For instance, I owe the fact that I am degreed professional (professional bartender, anyway) solely to procrastination. That I was able to graduate (late) from a fine institution of higher learning was the result of a concerted series of herculean efforts to finish and deliver papers to professors who were on their way to the airport, the weekend after the end of any given semester. Indeed, I would not have been admitted to the school were it not for the inspired essay I wrote while on the train (cleverly written about people on trains), enroute to the admissions office, where I hand delivered my application to a secretary who was locking the office door at 5:05 pm on the last possible day for fall admittance. As a result of all my frenzied minutes of intensive undergraduate study, today I have a solid understanding of how to ingratiate oneself with the most curmudgeonly janitors, how to fax only the first two pages of a twenty page opus “accidentally”, and where to buy Mini-Thins at four am on Easter Sunday.

One thing I did take away from my concentration in psychology was the alarming concept that procrastination is a form of perfectionism. I think I even wrote a paper on the topic between 7 and 10:27am before my 10:30 Clinical one morning. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a perfectionist, but who am I to argue with science? Anyway, it sounds a lot better than simply admitting that I’d rather catch every single episode of “The White Shadow”, in triplicate, than work on something in a timely fashion. According to my vague recollection, the procrastinator is believed to not merely be the victim of an all-powerful inner sloth, nor are we the good for nothing layabouts we appear to be. Rather, procrastinators are constrained by a sub-conscious conflict of desires: one, to be the creme de la creme, the other, to never fail due to our innate shortcomings. We set ourselves up so that if the world doesn’t accept our work as that of gods among men, we can rely upon any number of factors to excuse our poor performance (we had no sleep, we didn’t have enough time, we never saw that episode of the Love Boat before). And when we triumph against all odds, we can smugly congratulate ourselves on our ability to “turn it on” and “excel under pressure” and “never miss The Simpsons”.

For years I labored under the delusion that my propensity for procrastinating would naturally decline as I advanced away from the cradle of academia and into the cold, hard appointment keeping world. But, alas, no. Instead, I’ve found that my powers of deception have developed to the point where I am constantly entangled in the webs that I weave to cover my lassitude. In other words, I can now lie like a Persian carpet to cover my ass which is almost constantly exposed in the metaphorical sense. For instance, I know that each month my editors will ask, “Why is your column late, again, Miss Lane?” Answering them is one task for which I am always prepared far ahead of time. In fact, I have more than enough plausible excuses banked up and ready for withdrawal on every deadline well into the next century. Of course, I’d like to share some of those with you now, but I’d hate to spoil the monthly surprise for the publishing powers that be.

Actually, most of the lying I do is done on a very private, internal basis. I am constantly convincing myself that I would have done “x”, had it not been for “y”. Despite the nine out of ten cases where “y” turns out to be equal or greater than 5 Sapphire and Tonics, I still find myself believable. And I have found many worthwhile activities to engage in which allow me to feel that I have accomplished something while doing nothing at all. The laundry is my favorite. Every time I wash my clothes I buy myself two hours of pure, unadulterated loafing, during which I am able to reassure myself that I am not simply frittering away precious time pouring over Mademoiselle, but that I am doing my laundry. Something could happen at any time in the wash cycle, so I really can’t risk allowing my vigilance to be subverted by any meaningful act. So, that leaves only cheesy magazines and tv as the only safe means of passing the time. It occurs to me that if it wasn’t for the love of laundry, I might actually be a hippie. Certainly the pot smoking and timelessness of the hippie lifestyle fit right in with my procrastination program. If only I could get around to finishing that macrame halter...