Procrastination is fear of failure

It has been approximately 2 months and some change since the last blog post and I can say for certain that I was procrastinating. The act of delaying the inevitable was my personal defintion for a long time and which isn’t that far from the web definition. I sleep late on weekends to delay the inevitable weekdays or I put things on an endless mental todo list, which gets scrapped by the time I wake up next morning. This definition doesn’t feel quite right. Why do we procrastinate and why does it happen to me when I know that its bad?

Recently, I saw a YouTube short that showed Jim Carrey’s Commencement speech at MIU in 2014. In it, he says “All decisions are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.” My first thought was, “That’s impossible! I’m in my comfy remote job because of money and I wouldn’t say I love or fear money…” In actuality, that’s exactly what he is pointing out. I have a high ego and hate failing. Being in the constant successful light of my parents and friends during my childhood made it really hard to try new things. If I failed at that thing, would it mean that my smartness was a temporary?

To protect my ego, I played it safe. I never confessed to my crushes. I took the math honors courses because that’s what I was good at. My art teacher would push me to try new things like oil painting and watercolor, but I stuck to colored pencil for all my portfolio finals. Etc., etc., there would always be seemingly practical tradeoffs of me just specializing in what I was good at. But what if I was an amazing oil painter? What if I had confessed to that person? Where would my life be if I wasn’t practical and dogmatic about the most optimal paths?

So I challenge myself to explore this year. It might be ugly and I’ve rewritten this exact sentence 20 different times, but its how life is.

P.S those TODOs for my About and Projects page are really becoming an eyesore