My Right Foot---Day 27: The Procrastinating Perfectionist

There’s an old saying that the one thing in life that’s fair is that everyone gets 24 hours in a day.

Of course, some of us are forced to spend a good hunk of those 24 hours doing things we’d rather not be doing. But everyone has SOME free time. Some might only get an hour while their young child takes a nap. Others might get the whole twenty-four. And you can’t get around sleep---trust me, I’ve tried.

My senior year in high school, I had a paper due. A big paper. I guess I was spending too much time doing plays and music and not enough time working on that stupid paper. I seem to remember this particular term paper being on, “Evelyn Waugh’s Use of Catholicism in Brideshead Revisited”.

Anywho, with little time to spare, I decided to try to pull an all-nighter. I’d never done it before, but had heard of other girls doing it in order to finish a project on time. A friend of mine who’d done it many times suggested LOTS of caffeine. Coffee, tea or soda---she said would do the trick. She also went with me to the drugstore to pick up a box of something called Vivarin.

“It’s what truck drivers use when they have to drive a truck all night.”

The label said it was just caffeine. In pill form. A ton of it. I bought a box of Vivarin, a 2-liter bottle of Coke, and one of those giant chocolate candy bars. Back at home, I covered the kitchen table with note cards on Catholicism and British Prose and set to work.

At 4:30 in the morning, my Mom woke-up and found me in the kitchen. Paper still not done and a jittery mess. She spotted the package of Vivarin and hit the roof.

“Are you doing drugs?!?!”

No matter how much I tried to explain about caffeine and truck drivers, she was determined to believe I was using drugs. “You stop taking that right now and go to bed.”

I only WISHED I could go to bed. The paper was still unfinished and between the Vivarin, soda and chocolate bar, it was unlikely I’d sleep for at least three more days. My stomach was in knots. Sure, I was awake---but I could barely keep my eyes open.

The paper did not get finished that night. In fact, I was so ill from the caffeine and lack of sleep that I stayed home from school that day. I finished my paper the next afternoon and turned it in the following day. A day late. Marked down half a grade.

Oddly, my Mom did not confiscate the “drugs”. The package of Vivarin went into my bedroom drawer. In college, I’d pull out one of the pills every now and then---always with the same effect. Jittery and unable to either sleep or get anything done. Papers were still occasionally late. Once, for a Shakespeare class, I turned in a paper a day late with the following note attached, “Some are born late, others achieve lateness, and others have lateness thrust upon them.”

Strangely, in all his years teaching Shakespeare, none of his students had been clever enough to paraphrase The Bard in this way. He was apparently quite charmed and put a note on my Titus Andronicus paper saying, “Very clever! Just for that, I will count it as being on time.”

I realized then that while we all get the same 24 hours---if you’re clever, you can occasionally buy yourself a little extra.

I’m not the most prompt gal in the world. I try. I really do. But sometimes I just get distracted by a book or something in a shop window or an interesting person along the way. I tend to live my life ten minutes behind the rest of the world. Knowing this, I try little tricks to fool myself like setting my clocks a few minutes ahead. Leaving a few minutes earlier for appointments. And telling people I’ll be there around 5-ish. None of them work. I can't fool myself. If I even get so specific as to say between 5 and 5:30, I certainly won’t get there till at least 5:35.

Even things I am looking forward to---I will somehow manage to find something to distract me to make me at least 10 minutes late. Some might say this is a fear of success. I say it’s more like the Procrastinating Perfectionist that I’ve discovered I am. I put things off not because I don’t want to do them---but because I want to do them perfectly.

My papers were not late because I was lazy, but because I was an over-achiever---I wanted my papers to be the BEST papers anyone had ever seen. And when I realized I wasn’t producing THE BEST paper on Titus Andronicus the world had ever seen---well, I started to panic. Then get depressed. And then I would try to convince myself to just settle for getting it done. But without the initial enthusiasm and the hope to be the best… Well, the task held little interest. Who can get all excited about getting a “C”?

I still occasionally have this problem. I’ve had to learn how to accept a “C” in life for some things; and figure out which other things need an “A+++” to make me happy.

Today I have the film shoot---for this, I need that elusive “A+++”. Consequently, I am late. Partially not my fault. My Metrocard wouldn’t scan and the man lazily shoved it under the Plexiglas window with a pre-paid envelope and muttered in a sing-song voice. “Unable to read. Code 14. Send it in.”

I miss the train. But I was already running 10 minutes late. I give myself a “D”.

Luckily, once I actually GET there, the first day of shooting goes well. I don’t think I deserve an “A+++”; lateness does knock you down at least half a grade. But I come out of there feeling I deserve at least an “A”.

After the shoot, I walk down Central Park West for about thirty blocks just to think about my day. And to think about my day tomorrow. And the day after that. The things I need to do. The things I want to do. That huge mental list of our lives that piles up with every year. The list probably started when I was fourteen and has grown steadily since. Sure, I’ve pulled a few things off that Life List for various reasons. Being a spy in Russia had to go. Not only is there no longer an Iron Curtain---but spying isn’t as romantic as it seemed when I was fifteen. Professional ballet dancer is now off the list. To be honest, I don’t think secret agent or ballerina would have worked out for me. I would have had to be the best. Greater than Mata Hari or Anna Pavlova. And instead, I would have wound up being a file clerk in the CIA or a sales rep for Danskin.

I still follow world affairs and take my ballet classes for exercise----and that’s just fine with me. For these things, I gladly accept the "C".

But today, the one thing I wanted to excel at, I somehow managed to do. I remembered a scene we were shooting and how I’d come up with an original way to do it. On the train, I pop open my camera to look at the footage. The scene came out great. I’d gotten my shot---plus some.

Back at home, I decided to treat myself. I made pork ribs for the first time, rented a movie and soaked my Central Park West weary feet in a spa bath. I may have been late---but today I was clever. And I’m not marking myself down for that.

So if I'm late, it's a GOOD thing. It just means that I care.