Picking up from last time –
I was talking about being a bit of a procrastinator.
I don’t want to go too nuts trying to evaluate why, in a post about an unrelated activity. Nonetheless, I do want to work through these thoughts a little…
I know procrastination is such an L.A. thing. I recognize there are bad habits people get into in L.A. (e.g. being constantly late, always being “too busy” for people, and more) that I notice myself slipping into sometimes!
And I don’t know why! Is there something about the city that makes us this way? Do you just start to become like the people who surround you? I don’t know…
I will say in the world of freelance, my schedule is practically constantly changing. Because of that, I often wait ’til the last minute to make any plans. And actually oftentimes, that behooves me. But even if procrastination is in some ways good in my life, I need to learn how to turn that on and off, I guess.
Also, I could understand procrastinating on things you maybe don’t want to do. But this is something I wanted to do! I was happy to be asked to do this, and thought it was a really fun thing.
I could also understand being late with stuff if you overbooked yourself. But did I really have that much going on, that I couldn’t write a letter? I think not. During tech week I stayed in a hotel (since the theater was oh so far from my house).
I brought stationery with me so I could write and send the letter while I was down there! But did I? No. Sure, I was tired. But too tired to write a letter? Psh. I was only working 13 or so hours a day. I should’ve made time for it. I didn’t. And I have no real excuse as to why I didn’t. So, I feel really bad about that.
Basically, this is just something I want to make a mental note of so I can keep an eye on this kind of behavior. I want to be punctual. (More than punctual – I want to be early.) I want to be reliable. I want to be great.
And I think people generally think I’m reliable… but I want to be better (always better).
The one thing that does give me some solace is I know that many times when people have projects such as this, they give a due date that’s flexible. I know when I was my thespian troupe’s president, I always asked people to turn things in at least a week before they were actually due.
That way, when people came to me and said, “I’m soooo sorry; Can I please have more time?” (which invariably always happened), I could say, “okay. You can have a 3-day extension (and then I could give them another one if need be).
So, plenty of people in the world are procrastinators. That much I know. And to compensate for that, many people leave extra time and space for things like this. So, I just have to hope she did…
And this is where I’ll pick up next time.