Reflections From the Depression Bedroom: Follow Through, Confidence/Self Worth

Procrastination. Most people will read that and be immediately triggered by a memory from their school days, or that call to the water company they are putting off because truly, its agonizing, and why the fuck do they put you on hold for so long?!?! Anyway, naturally I have my own unique relationship with procrastination, and thanks to some incredible counseling and serious self-reflection I think I am beginning to understand why. 

Imagine there is a child and their mom at the park. The child is obviously really excited to be there with their mom, and the mom is excited for an opportunity to relax a bit and enjoy the weather while their child plays. “Mommy, watch me go down the slide” the little one exclaims, and mom looks up for just long enough to make it seem she’s watching only to immediately put her head back down into her book or phone once the kid gets going down the slide. The kid of course notices, but instead of saying something, continues to play with the assumption that mommy is more interested in her own things than she is in them and what they’re doing. “Did you have fun at the park today?” asks mom as they head back to the car. “You would know if you were there,” the kid thinks before responding softly “yeah.” 

Now, imagine that you (the version of you that has dreams and goals) are the child in this scene, and you (the version that procrastinates on said goals and dreams) are the mom. The moment you asked yourself to watch as you went down the slide was you taking action toward whatever you need to reach your goals, and that moment you looked up only to look right back down at whatever else you were doing is the moment you essentially told yourself that what you really want or need to do doesn’t matter, at least not more than that temporary moment of comfort. Complacent and butt hurt with no one to blame but yourself. 

Ultimately, take this scenario and replay it out in different contexts of your life- that idea for a new business you had, the photography class you wanted to take. What ensues is a cycle of disappointment because you just simply can’t seem to show up for yourself. For me it starts with little things like picking up the clothes in the corner of my room, and becomes big things like waiting until the week it is due to start a 30 page paper that has been assigned since the start of the class 2.5 months ago. Yeah that last one ended in taking an incomplete in the class and by the grace of a very kind professor, I was able to re-do the paper and complete the class the following semester (but don’t get it twisted, I still procrastinated on that one too! *laugh/cries internally*) 

But why do we do this?!? The agony and embarrassment of having to present my paper to my professor months after everyone had already finished and passed the class was surely worse than it would’ve been had I just written the paper to begin with, right? Twenty year old me might have said yes, but truly it didn’t matter. I procrastinated on that paper so hard for reasons I will explain, but I think you would’ve had to be there to really understand (for the dramatic context of course). The skinny is that I was not only working two jobs and going to school full time, but actively trying to outrun the reality that I was severely unhappy with myself by maintaining a bustling social life (you know, bus, ‘nother club, ‘nother club, plane, ‘nother club, bus.. etc). My engine was running on caffeine, nicotine, and a fear of slowing down too much to notice the weight I was carrying. Well friends, I learned in high school that I was not a runner, so I’ll let you guess how that went for me. 

So all of this avoidance, what does it have to do with procrastination? Well, I mean,  what are you doing when you procrastinate if not avoiding discomfort- even though it is temporary? Doing almost anything for someone who doesn’t feel confident in what they’re doing is exponentially harder, and therefore makes it easier to just not do anything, even the smallest of tasks. Is it possible that at some point we become addicted to the anxiety that “putting it to the last minute” produces- convincing ourselves that that is the only time we produce our best work? That last one comes from my personal bank of delusion that admittedly worked sometimes, but it's a surefire way to burn yourself out. It is almost like throwing a tantrum within yourself, where your brain is telling you to do something and your body sits still in refusal. Or, your inner child asking you to watch them go down a slide (take a leap of faith) and you halfheartedly entertain it, only to go back to scrolling on tik-tok (lack of follow through). This leaves me with another question, why the lack of confidence?

Besides the busy work and social life, I was 2.5 years into a degree that I had realized long before this point that I didn’t want, and instead of digging in my heels and choosing a path I actually wanted- I did what I thought was expected and just put my head down to finish. The only problem is you can’t see what is in front of you on your path when your head is down. Here I was not doing really anything for myself, and if I was, it was something of a distraction. There was nothing that was going to propel me forward into my dreams, though truthfully I couldn’t tell you what they were or if I believed in them. People around me were hurting and needed support, work needed me, I had to  finish college- everything but my own personal wellbeing was a priority. There was not much for me to be confident in other than what value I brought to other people or institutions, which is a sustainable path to emptiness. 

All of this to say, I was procrastinating so hard to protect myself from the shame of not honoring myself and what I wanted. The paper from earlier (which happened to be in my capstone class) my messy depression room, the drawings that I started and never finished. Not lazy and unmotivated like I thought, but confused, sad, and exhausted from hiding it from myself and the world. I just want it to be clear though, I am not writing this because  I have overcome procrastination and I am now the world’s most productive and on time girl boss- no no love, I am still human. I am also not saying that just because you find something you love to do will you stop putting off doing the work at times. I am however saying that confidence in yourself and what you do comes with time and honesty with yourself about what you want. I am much less judgmental of myself when I lay in bed and take a moment to veg out as I know my dreams and goals are not in detriment during moments of rest, and that sometimes even just getting up out of bed and brushing your teeth is the work that got done for the day.  

There are of course other reasons to procrastinate, not wanting to be judged, not knowing where to start, etc.. but we don’t have time to get into all of that, I have already been putting off writing this piece to begin with (LMAO). No, I am not even going to leave you with a solution, because I personally don’t think that there is one that would work for everyone. Before you write yourself off as a lost cause though, before you assume that temporary comfort is best, ask yourself what you are doing and why you are doing it. Mom took her kid to the park that day to enjoy a moment of rest, not to purposefully ignore them- so her consumption with her phone had nothing to do with the child and everything to do with that moment to herself. What if you’re not a lazy screw up and you too just need to take a moment to rest & reflect?