Tag: dailyprompt-2089

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Tomorrow

Daily writing prompt
What have you been putting off doing? Why?
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Procrastination is such a dirty word. I prefer delay. It’s the late summer phenomenon of too much to do in a garden gone wild, and frost coming on. I should make haste, and not slowly. But while my orphaned garden cries out for attention, I write a post on my blog. Play with the dog or cats, and read the news.

Now it’s not like I’ve done nothing. I’ve frozen lots of chard and kale, harvested tomatoes, peppers, and even some squash. I’ve trimmed back five years’ worth of shrub and tree growth that makes the yard look like a jungle. And I’ve filled around seven bags with brush clippings.

I think I could write a song about what needs to be done. More trimming, pick up and compost garden waste, harvest the beans, clear the vines, it goes on. It’s too heavy a lyric for mere guitar and voice. I see something darker as frost and fall advance heavily. Maybe an organ and a dour chorus?

I’ve promised myself to cut back next year. There have been groans from the family, “don’t but back on my favorite —-“, but I don’t see any written, ironclad contracts for assistance next year. So if they want —- I nominate them to weed that patch, put up the trellis, and inspect the crop for bugs. Someone should be ordained official weed picker, other than me.

Of course, I threaten to cut back every year, but this time I think I mean it.

In the meantime, procrastination remains such a dirty word…oh, look! It’s going to rain. Won’t get much done outside today. The last of the kale will just have to wait.

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Procrastination

Daily writing prompt
What have you been putting off doing? Why?
View all responses

Let’s not be too quick to dismiss procrastination. It can actually serve a useful purpose. I once learned from a friend in historic preservation that procrastination was one of his most valuable tools in saving landmark structures from demolition. By slowing, distracting, and avoiding demolition, his organization had the time to gather the resources needed to save and restore important structures. Nincompoop that I was, I had previously thought of procrastination as just doing nothing or avoiding doing anything. But it turns out that it can be a very active and intense activity.

I think about this every time a project is stalled in my workshop. Over the past months, my work has become more multi-media and less traditional woodcarving. It’s still firmly anchored in my 19th-century maritime roots, but I’ve adapted more of it into my contemporary practice.

But each step along the way, I find myself pausing, procrastinating, before I pick up the carving tools. The project is still on the computer. It will be a three-dimensional carved diorama of the clipper Dreadnaught. I’ll utilize many of the techniques I used on my carving “ Reefing Sail Before the Blow,” 

Reefing Sail Before the Blow

but Dreadnaught is heaving in heavy seas and is a square rigger. All this means that the carving technique will differ for sails and hull. The hull needs perspective added because she sails on the starboard quarter approaching us. All this requires thought, and not just a flick of the wrist as I carve in a bit of detail.

Procrastination – a very useful tool – never do today what you can put off for tomorrow!

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Repent at Leisure

I know a historical preservationist in a large city east of me who always maintained that procrastination was his best weapon against developers who wished to tear down historic buildings to erect ticky-tac developments. He argued that it wasn’t that all development was terrible; it was just needful to put the right package into place that was respectful of the structures, history, and community, which took time. He’s been pretty successful, too. You could mount a gallery show of his many successes.

His approach made me take a new look at slower, more deliberative approaches to things. After all, the crown jewel of his efforts easily took twenty years to attain. There was no crash bam; thank you, Mam, rapid-fire solutions involved. That Bullfinch courthouse was not a teetering wreck about to become broken brick, stone, and scree one day and a glittering monument to a community that cared about its history the next.

So, I’ve spent more time thinking about the appropriate pace of things I do. I’m not talking about leaving essential maintenance on the house undone, but I am talking about not rushing to do something just because it can be done. 

Someone I knew once put an advanced, newfangled coating on the hull of his boat. Why? Because the salesman convinced him that it would be so smooth that the boat would race through the water. A year later, he had the bottom totally scraped and sanded because the wonder coating had started peeling off. I remember the Cap’n standing there, pipe in hand, shaking his head and muttering, “Sin in haste, repent at leisure.”

So, sometimes, it’s wise to put off things rather than sinning in haste and repenting at leisure.