Tag Archives: procrastination

Today Won’t Be the Day That Changes Everything

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Photo by Phil Venditti

Today could be the day that changes everything.

That was how I felt almost every single day while I was unemployed a few years back. The next big opportunity was only one phone call, one email or one text message away. I was on high alert and had my phone and computer ready to respond. Yet I rarely did anything that could effect that change. I sat and waited, expecting someone else to come along and hire me. Shouldn’t the world stumble upon my LinkedIn page or my prodigious social media output and recognize my genius?

The result of this skewed perception was about what you’d expect. Crickets. A big pile of nothing. Nobody called. Nobody emailed. Nobody texted….

…unless I reached out first and made something happen. Yes, the only results I got stemmed from actions I took. All that waiting, all that well-orchestrated high alert status was only busyness masked as movement creating nothing but stress and anxiety. There are no white knights, no heroes, no saviors. I must be the hero in my own movie. Only I can change the ending.

My magical thinking was a distracting narcotic, a balm to ease the pain of uncertainty and unemployment. Today could be the day. But it never was. It was only a diversion from the massive, looming problem that was going to drag me under unless I got off my procrastinating ass and did something.

It took me months to understand the need to keep moving, keep acting, cut the nonsense, focus and make things happen.

Here is the secret it took me so long to learn. Nobody gives a damn about me. Yes, I have many people who love me, but it is up to me to save myself and create the life I want. I get to choose whether I want to be the villain or the hero.

Inaction is an action. Inaction is the fast lane to victimhood and unhappiness. If you want to wait forever for life to happen give inaction a shot.

Action begets action. Action may result in failure. but inaction guarantees it.  I can create my future, but I must act now. And act again tomorrow. And the next day. And so on.

This is the decision I must make every day.  Move forward, get pushed back and begin again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Today won’t be the day that changes everything…unless I make the changes.

Thinking is easy, blogging is hard

I was asked last week if i blog and after an awkward yes, I had to admit that it’s getting pretty dusty here at World on Shuffle headquarters.

So many ideas. So few blog posts. Nine months of crickets.

I keep an impressive list of potential blog topics. Many of them are quite fleshed out and simply require my hands on the keyboard. However, that seems to be the final stage of their existence. Some of them perish because they just aren’t very good ideas. Most of them die at the hands of Twitter, emails, Temple Run, Instagram, Plants vs Zombies or any of the many other seductive distractions enticing and serenading me from my iPad and iPhone.

Yes, I am addicted to distraction at times. Some of these detours are productive, but the blog gets dusty and lonely. Like talk, thinking is cheap. Thinking is easy, blogging is hard. It requires work and focus. Commitment. Action.

My pledge is to blog twice a week at the very least. Please feel free to remind me when it doesn’t happen. If I don’t respond I am probably tending to my son’s Zombie Farm and calling it productivity.