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Chris Slatter

My Blog








Feb
02

I'll get to it later...I hope

 

Rune of the Day: Sowelu, Wholeness
 
Last month I cleaned my apartment so thoroughly you could have performed open heart surgery in the kitchen. My refrigerator and pantry have never been so well stocked, my clothes so clean and well-pressed. My files are all apple pie and the car is spotless. You’re right, I have a bad case of procrastination.
 
Since leaving my job at the end of the year to pursue my own projects I have sought nearly every excuse not to begin. At one stage it got so bad that I even expended several minutes of what should have been valuable writing time to looking up procrastination on the internet.
 
Procrastination is apparently associated with perfectionism, the pursuit of which can lead to feelings of inadequacy. Did you know that procrastination can be clinical in extreme cases? That is, it can be so chronic that sufferers are advised to seek professional help, though you’d think that the condition would delay them actually making an appointment, possibly for years.
 
For students, procrastination is an old friend. The website I consulted stated
that 80% to 95% of all students acknowledged that they practised procrastination
at some stage during their studies. There is even a condition called ‘student syndrome’
where students only begin to study seriously immediately before an examination. Well, we’re all familiar with that one, but I never knew it had been given medical legitimacy. I wondered if this could be presented in mitigation prior to failing, “You see, sir, I suffer from ‘student syndrome’ and I was hoping you could take this into account when grading my essay.”
 
Famous procrastinators in history are legion. Isaac Asimov took 10 years to earn his chemistry PhD, Douglas Adams was notorious for missing deadlines and Helen Hooven Santmyer took a reported half century to complete her New York Times Best Seller novel “And Ladies of the Club”. One can’t help but gasp at Ms. Santmyer’s magnificent act of procrastination. I can’t imagine to what lengths she went to delay finishing her novel, but I am sure that there was nothing out of place, no household task that hadn’t been completed on the day she scrolled that last page into her typewriter. Though I can’t help but wonder if her life didn’t seem just a little bit emptier without the big job that needed to be done mocking her on the horizon.
 

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About Me

I have been an advertising copywriter, film director, teacher of screenwriting and a television producer. I have worked for some of the world's largest advertising agencies in Australia and the UK before attending the London Film School for two years.


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