Stumbling into procrastination
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday. . ."
Brake before entering
I’ve been procrastinating about posting a series of photos I took of bike racks. Here’s one to get us started.
And another one that I’ve published before but which I love for its soul—and the squiggly shadow it casts.
Procrastination
I haven’t been putting off writing about procrastination. It just didn’t occur to me to write about it till now.
So, pull up a chair and let’s talk.
We all put things off. Less pleasant tasks, often. But sometimes even things we want to do. Like sitting and reading that page-turner novel, but only after the laundry and the dishes are done. And oh, yes, take out the trash. And maybe watch a little TV.
I put off chores having to do with organization. The basket on the corner of my desk, with its unanswered mail, things to read once and toss, and pleas for donations, is overflowing now, and will always be.
Part of procrastination is acceptance.
Even tasks that result in money coming in, like doing my taxes for the refund or applying for retiree medical benefits, are put off for months.
Some things I put off and really do not understand why. I have a huge pile of library books to tackle, but instead I am watching TV while quilting, or I am playing endless rounds of the solitaire game called Yukon. Bedtime creeps up, and I only have time for a few pages.
Curves ahead
One of those half-read books, The Art of Doing Nothing, the one I found while perusing a 1998 edition of The New Yorker, has a chapter—the first one—called “The Art of Procrastinating.” I’ve been putting off reading it, but for the purposes of this posting I overcame my sloth.
The author, Veronique Vienne, writes about how the meandering nature of rivers mirrors the sinuous routes of our lives:
For most of us, as for most living organisms in nature, the path of least resistance is a succession of languid curves.
Procrastination allows us to explore byways we’d never encounter on the straightaway. “Maybe procrastination is nature’s way,” Vienne writes, “of tidying up messes and cleaning up corners.”
I like this suggestion: “Give yourself permission to abandon any activity midway.” Yes! That’s where the light comes in. You are frittering away at some task, and suddenly the oblique overtakes you. You are off on a tangent, and you pop out somewhere you never intended or foresaw.
This is new ground, made holy by your discovering it quite by accident.
Congratulations, you have just changed you life. Not by pursuing an idea, but by kicking back and letting things happen.
Phone calls
I am a world-class procrastinator when it comes to using the phone. (Funny, no one calls it a telephone anymore. It’s an iPhone or an Android or just a phone.)
Back in my very early years, I was afraid of dialing (the only way you could make a call; touch-tone push buttons were an invention of the 1960s). What would I say if someone picked up on the other end? I was shy in initiating conversations of any sort back then. I didn’t understand how other people worked, how they thought, how they signaled without words.
To this day, I think about my friends and relatives a lot more often than I call them. I’ve had a little list for some weeks now with the same names on it. And yet I still don’t pick up the phone. Texting is easier. Email, too.
Working around
Tell me if this resonates with you. You need to get some work done, writing or categorizing photos or updating the index in your journal, so you pack up and go to a coffeeshop to buckle down and concentrate.
So here you are, computer unpacked, fingers on the keyboard. And you are looking out the window and enjoying your cortado and eavesdropping on the conversation of the millennials at the next table.
You later leave, down one expensive coffee, with only a few paragraphs under your belt. You would have been more productive making coffee at home and sitting at your own boring desk and looking out your own boring window.
Making it pay
Still, the coffeeshop run can be worthwhile.
If I take a bus to a far-flung establishment, chances are I’ll come upon a story involving other passengers. If I go on streets and sidewalks by wheelchair, I’ll invariably come across things that must be noticed.
My senses are open to new stimuli. Smell the roses, the lilacs, the lavender. Taste the dust thrown up by leaf blowers. Crush herb leaves between my fingers. Take a photo of an invasive plant.
So, no, the coffeeshop procrastination is a fruitful one. Almost all the time.
Poem
While we’re on the subject of mutable time, the flexibility of the moment that allows you to stretch into it, here is a poem about being on time.
We all know that punctuality is relative.
Quite likely on time
Quite likely on time— Unless there’s traffic, The bus doesn’t come or I forget my hat and go back. Time sits and cackles At our feeble effort To get where we should be At the appointed hour. There’s our time and universe time— Sit back and accept it Think on the present Not on the goal. Simply be, in the present, No one will remember, Even tomorrow, Your five-minute lapse.
Roses
Bright blossoms are everywhere. At my home, tall roses line the driveway. Under my bedroom window, a bush seduces with intense red-orange blooms and an equally intense, spicy scent.
Here’s an old Irish melody about roses:
There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream. And the nightingale sings ’round it all the day long. In the time of my childhood ’twas like a sweet dream, To sit by the roses and hear the bird’s song. That bow’r and its music I ne’er can forget, But oft when alone in the bloom of the year, I think, “Is the nightingale singing there yet? Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?”
Irish roses
When my husband, Robert Jaffe, was a child, his family would escape the summer heat of Brooklyn at scenic Haines Falls in upstate New York. His father would motor up on weekends, and then spend his two-week vacation with his family.
Haines Falls is located in the part of the Catskills that was known as the Irish Alps, and not in the part frequented by Jewish families, known as the Borscht Belt. The Jaffes stayed at a resort most frequented by Irish Americans. Robert’s father, Maxwell, was known to friends as Mac, and the Irish folks honorarily dubbed the family the MacJaffes.
In the evenings, around the piano, they would harmonize “My Wild Irish Rose, “The Last Rose of Summer” or “The Rose of Tralee.” Mac was often at the keyboard, playing by ear.
These are songs that could be in the repertoire of an Irish tenor, a peculiar breed of songster with a clear, strong voice. You’ll hear him singing “Danny Boy” and maybe “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” After all, Tony Bennett described himself as “a tenor who sings like a baritone.”
Names
Recently I met Joe, the owner of Tōv Turkish Coffee, who has the perfect name for a coffee shop owner.
I’ve come up with names for various groups before: plumbers, clowns, girls with big hair. (Scroll down to “Silliness break.”)
Here are some more:
Names for beavers: Bucky, Chomp, Toothless, Smack
Names for skunks: Pepé, Scentless, Softie, Stripe
Names for lizards: Larry, Linda, Lulu, Stretch, Sketch, Claws
Myna birds: Lorna, Laura, Myra, Michelle, Michael
Crabs: Sideways, Scritch, Scottie, Prickles
Baristas: Phillip, Jerks, Kaffe, Claus, Emma
Bonobos (a word that keeps coming up in The New York Times Spelling Bee): Bob, Bobo, Bonomo, Bonhomie, Boopsie, Dolph
About Bob
Bob is a great name for just about anything or anyone. A manatee. A lynx. Maybe a fox or a snail or a dog. A church. Your best friend.
My husband, too, was known as Bob for most of his career and adult life. In retirement, he has opted for the more character-ful Robert. I still call him Bob, but only some of the time.
Other generative names could fit with various species:
Yardley could be a dog or a stoat or a snail.
Hardy is a great name for a wolf or a shih tzu. Or a Saint Bernard.
Duff sounds like a beagle or a bunny or, again, your best friend.
What about Brian? Maybe you have an idea.
Yancy, anyone? Clancy? Nancy?
Last names first
I’ve been photographing delivery trucks. Like Smitty’s Vending Inc. Great name, Smitty. Probably someone named Smith.
Do any of you know nicknames that come from surnames? In the movie “Monsters Inc.,” James Patrick Sullivan is called Sully. A man named Brown could be known as Brownie.
Here are some types of friends you might have: comrade, companion, tovarich, amigo, crony, mate, pal.
Ordinary names
When I was living in Medford, Ore., just out of college, I briefly held a job with a furniture company, where I helped manage the mailing list. I noticed at the time that the vast majority of names on the list had little “ethnic” quality: Smith, Brown, White, Green, Johnson—like they had all come from the same English plantation. Nothing that was vaguely Eastern European, Asian, African, Jewish.
Surely that has changed by now.
I was fired from that job. I complained when a supervisor asked me to make his coffee. It turned out all right: gas prices were sky-high in 1973 because of the OPEC crisis, so I called the newspaper in Ashland, which was 10 miles to the south, and offered to cover the county courthouse in Medford. That gig led to a full-time job as a reporter at the Ashland Daily Tidings. It lasted until my then-husband and I moved to Portland at the end of 1974.
Check out
Cultural awareness
You are more likely to recognize the words of the subhead for this posting if you are an oldster like me. The rest of the quote that starts “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday” is, “for a hamburger today.” The speaker is Wimpy, a minor character in the Popeye pantheon. There was once a chain of burger bars called “Wimpy’s.”
I sprinkle in the occasional cultural or literary allusion without commentary. (There’s one from Leonard Cohen in here someplace.) No problem if you read right over them. Happens all the time.
One phrase I really hate: “Unless you’ve been living under a rock . . .” Often it introduces a meme or a concept that I’ve never heard of. I don’t see much reason to keep up with popular culture. I just pull that rock back over me.
Chat me up
I had an opportunity to use “chat” at a business’s customer service webpage. I find chat to be unutterably annoying, but in this case I had to resort to it because when I phoned CS, they offered to call me back—“you will not lose your place in line”—then they never did. Had I stayed on the line, the hold music would have driven me insane, anyway.
The chatter (chattor?), whose name was Christina, asked me to enter the serial number of my product “one digit at a time.”
I’ve encountered similar instructions before. Is there any other way to enter a number?
Your weekly reminder
Yes, I’m going to urge you, yet again, to write. Writing daily has changed my life, and it will affect yours, too. Trust me on this.
Need a prompt? I like to just “find” them in books, catalogs or any other printed matter. Write about the first word(s) your eyes rest upon.
What’s on the desk near you? Junk mail? I just opened one. It says “Count Me In! I’ll help inspire more . . .”
I’m just betting you could use that phrase as a springboard for all sorts of thoughts. Just sit back and let the oblique idea slash past. Think of “inspire” in the original sense of taking a breath. Massage it into “aspire,” “spiral,” or just “spire.” Add the multiplier “more.” Now you have something to write about.
What you write will be wholly original, uniquely yours. I hope you have as much faith in yourself as I do in you.
Just know that great things await. Your portals to access these riches are simple and free: writing, meditation, being present. And, too, there are your dreams, real or remembered.
The thought of your awakening makes me smile.
Thank you.
Over at Juke
I have a new posting at Juke, a creative prompt on the concepts of birth and rebirth. Another will be coming in early July.
Final photo
One more bike rack, for the road. This is at a Southeast Portland middle school.
—30—
That line from Popeye always stays in my head. But yes, where the light gets in, too. Love this: “Congratulations, you have just changed you life. Not by pursuing an idea, but by kicking back and letting things happen.”
Keep on entering those numbers one digit at a time :)
Bob is a good name for a haircut too!