Procrastination, Depression, and Excuses.
I’m finding it terribly hard to focus.
Scroll, scroll, scroll.
I have plenty of energy, but nowhere to put it.
Creative projects? Could do.
Clean the house? It does need to get done.
Wash the dog? Yep, also on the to-do list.
Do I actually get up and do any of these things? Nope-a-dee-nope-nope-nope.
Scroll, scroll, scroll.
Perhaps I’m sitting here trying to trick myself into thinking I’m accomplishing something by typing out an article on Medium. Is it working? Sort of.
I think I’m hoping that some big revelation will come, something useful to share with the world.
“4 Tips and Tricks to Stop Procrastinating NOW.”
Get.
Off.
Your.
Phone.
I’m restless.
The fact of the matter is, I want to be useful. I have a lot of thoughts, most of them concerning my past, my healing, my growth. Some of them are to-do lists. Almost none of them are leading me to take action right now.
A quick google search on why we procrastinate will yield the following:
“The issue can be linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, ADHD, and poor study habits. Procrastination is connected to negative functioning and risks to mental health. People who procrastinate tend to have high levels of anxiety as well as poor impulse control.”
Great. Two of those things I know I have/have had in the past. One of those I’m struggling with on and off. Another is something a friend has suggested I look into as something I might have. And poor study habits? Isn’t it easier to blame some chemical imbalance than it is to accept that perhaps it’s due to our own willpower and lack of discipline that we’re not getting anything done?
Of course, that in itself is a coping mechanism for me. I never could accept that I had depression/anxiety because I was too busy staying busy to notice. I also think I thought I could willpower my way out of depression. It was easier to blame myself for how I was feeling than it was to accept that this terribly unfair thing was happening to me that I had little to not control over.
I’ve worked full-time since I was 17 to help support my family, and then to put myself through college. At university, I was taking a full class load while working two jobs (sometimes up to 55 hours a week) and sending money back home, while also trying to maintain a decent social life. I know I felt depression since I was a teenager, but I thought of it as a transient thing in my body. There were days I was depressed and days I wasn’t, so I didn’t think it was clinical.
Never mind I was fatigued almost all of the time. Never mind I was constantly stressed, forgetting things, and overworked. Never mind most days I felt like I had an elephant on my chest I couldn’t quite explain leading me to sit with a notebook by the lake late at night and watch the lights reflect across the water so as to try to find some relief for myself using a language I didn’t yet know how to speak.
When I was diagnosed with complex PTSD in 2021, I didn’t at the time knew exactly what it would mean for me, though I did know I finally had an explanation for the vast number of triggers I was experiencing in my life. I had originally started therapy to seek healing from a toxic relationship that had really done a number on my identity, only to find months later that that relationship was only a portion of the tapestry of my mental health slowly unfurling before my eyes.
When I started medication (an SSRI) to combat my depression in 2022, I think the word I would use to describe how I felt was something akin to hope. At the time, I was physically no longer capable of holding things together and trying to move through my life with the amount of pain I was experiencing. It just wasn’t possible, and I wasn’t willing to do it. It’s not that I was suicidal (I wasn’t), but simply that I was, perhaps for the first time in my life, admitting to the limits of my own capabilities.
Perhaps for some, it’s easier to blame our lack of motivation on a chemical imbalance, rather than a lack of discipline. But for me? I’ve worked so hard to appear and to be disciplined, reliable, capable, and resilient that for the longest time, I had no choice but to believe that my own motivational deficiencies were due to a lack of commitment, rather than biology.
I figured it was the weak way out to blame something like procrastination on chemistry. I’d learned all my life, you see, that being a good little girl, a good daughter, a good member of society, meant shouldering as much as physically possible without complaint. I would be grateful for what I was given, I would work hard to achieve my dreams, and if I faltered along the way, it had nothing to do with the system in which I was brought up, and everything to do with personal dedication. I made no allowances for myself, while simultaneously giving every allowance to the environment surrounding me.
And if anyone I trusted acknowledged the unfairness of my situation, I would shrug it off, say, “It is what it is,” and push any anger I might have felt far and away because the truth was, I couldn’t afford to feel it.
I have since begun to allow myself to feel all my feelings; I’ve begun allowing myself to accept the importance of them, and to place just as high a value on my own well-being as I do on the well-beings of everyone else. I’ve seen firsthand the freedom that comes from doing so, and I do everything I can now to help others achieve that same freedom for themselves.
Perhaps in writing this, I’ve succeeded in tricking myself into believing I’m being productive. Or perhaps I’m still procrastinating. Or perhaps, just maybe, by sharing my truth — how I feel, who I am, and what I’ve experienced —I’ve been the most productive I could’ve possibly been. Because who knows? Somebody might be reading this right now who needs to hear it, and that’s what writing, for me, is all about.
To my fellow procrastinators: all my love. I see you. I feel you. And you’ll be okay. ❤
