Wanzology

Procrastination

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Oh, hi, welcome back!! This is another episode of WANZOLOGY and I am your host, The Wanz. First of all, thanks for tuning in. I'm flying without a net here, not sure exactly what's going to happen. So I really, really hope you're paying attention because what you're about to hear is ‘off the top of the dome’, as they say, as I am coming to you now, I'm still working on a WANZOLOGY.com website, which I believe is live, but it is not complete. I want to have a repository there of WANZOLOGY past episodes, and maybe find something to your liking and maybe pass that on to a friend, compadre, significant other.

But for now, as I'm coming to you, I need to get this episode completed by the appropriate time, which is Wednesday at 9 a.m. Pacific. That's when I try to drop every episode. So if you're here and you're hearing this, I really appreciate you being here and I'm going to start this free form by talking about one of my favorite and most engaging experiences to date, and that is procrastination.

Procrastination is the bane of my existence. And I say that to you based solely on my experience. My experience has led me to believe that if there's a possible way of me not starting something, I'll find it. And if I don't start something, then I can never finish it. Or if I'm in process and I take a break, I may not come back to it. But the biggest one is, oh, it's the beginning of a day and I need to get out of bed and brush my teeth and take my medications and put in my contacts and then figure out. If I'm going to eat, what I'm going to eat, and if I don't eat, what am I going to do? How am I going to start my day? Here's where, if you're anything like me, and you have seemingly hundreds of thoughts swirling around in your head at any given second, this is where the challenge of existing starts.

There are lots of things that I can do after I complete what I call my routine. Which involves getting up, you know, I have to take my blood pressure in the morning because people of a certain age want to keep an eye on that stuff. Especially people of color of a certain age. If you're not taking your blood pressure every day and tracking it, you need to start doing that. Hypertension is a ‘thing’ and it is kind of a silent killer, especially for us black folk. So, after that happens and I record those results, then it's a matter of, okay, what's next? Usually on the list is either I take my medications for depression, or I put in my contacts and take eye drops to prevent against glaucoma. Sometimes, you know, one comes before the other and other comes before the one. I never know. But when those are done, then, okay, it's time to get down to business. Are we going to go eat? Are we going to make something to eat? Are we going to eat something we didn't finish yesterday? Are we gonna not eat?

Don't know. So in the meantime, while I'm trying to figure that out, I try to make my bed. Making my bed is the one, one thing, I do or try to do every day, regardless of whatever else happens in the course of a day.

In 2009, I was going through probably the worst bout of depression I've ever experienced. I was really, really on a daily basis exploring thoughts of suicide, because I really didn't want to be here anymore. I was really tired of things not working out. I was really tired of having given all that I thought I could give to a dream that I'd have since I was a kid and it wasn't going to happen because it just seemed like it was never going to happen. I didn't see anybody else my age out there who's lived the same dream, maybe walked a similar path. I gave up having faith in everything. If something was going to go wrong, odds are it was going to go wrong with me very soon. My outlook upon life was horrible. Now, mind you, at that time, I'm like seven, eight years sober, so the thought of checking out, though enticing, was not necessarily viable. It was not something that I was actually going to do, but boy, I looked at it hard. I looked at it so hard, there was the door that would lead me to suicide, and I decided to shut that door and put a chair outside of the door in the hallway of where that door was. I also decided what floor of what building in what city in my head all of that resided in.

I created a process by which I would have to evaluate. Cuz if I got down, if I got down low enough, I’d have to go to whatever that imaginary city is in my head, get a ride to the building, walk through the front door, check in with security, get cleared to get on the elevator, pick the proper floor, to the proper hallway, where there was a chair. And then I would sit in that chair and I just sit there What comes to mind when I sit there is in the first Matrix movie, Trinity picks up Neo from the club and they go for a ride and they're in the car with Switch and Apoc driving around and I All the people who are trying to save Neo, they know that he's probably bugged. And he says, “this is bullshit, get me out of the car.” They're saying, “nope, we gotta go through this, we gotta go through this.” And he says, “nope, screw it, screw it, just let me out, just let me out.” And the car stops under this bridge, and he gets out, and Trinity says, “you don't wanna go down that road, you already know where it leads.” And that's what I think of when I sit in that chair, in that hallway, in that building, in that city, all of which encased in my head. I know where that road on the other side of the door leads. It leads to a place that I don't want to be. Meaning, there are more things that I appreciate in my world, than I hate.

I haven't gotten into enough pain to warrant me taking my own life. There are things that I enjoy too much now. Sobriety opened up this world where I can just close my eyes when I'm outside and I hear the wind. I hear just sounds in general, which makes me go through the other senses. Open my eyes, I can see things swish my tongue around in my mouth, I can taste things. Touch whatever I'm wearing, I can feel things.
So you get the point? There are things in this world that, even though cumbersome, I would miss. I would miss my sons. I would miss my grandkids. I would so miss my sister and all the people that I'm related to. There are a lot of people that I really, really care about, and I wouldn't have access to them anymore. If I checked out, so I stick around. And here's the thing, I had a shrink who hipped me to this, turn around and look back, look back over the course of your life, find when you've had this feeling before. Now realize that whenever that was, you're looking back at it, which means you got from that place to where you are in this very moment. You have evidence, and that's what he called it, evidence that you can get through to the other side of whatever it is you're feeling. This is what I think about when I'm sitting in that chair. And then I start contemplating all these things that I had been through, and I stand up and I start walking down the hallway back to the elevator. Yeah. Down to the first floor out of the place out of that city, and I'm back into the present realizing, “damn it, I got, I got things to do because I'm still breathing”, and as long as I'm breathing, I have an opportunity. As long as I'm breathing, I have the opportunity to succeed and or fail.

Now, last year I picked up a phrase that I'm trying to really insert into my morning routine somewhere and that phrase is, “Either I win, or I learn. I never lose.”, and you're listening to a guy who felt like he lost all the time. I mean, his winning percentage was below one. That's what I felt like a lot. Even though I would try my best, I would still screw up, I would not be successful, I wouldn't complete things, I'd forget things, occasionally, I would hurt people. But thankfully, this recovery program that I went to 25 years ago now, it gives me a mechanism by which I can not only forgive others, but I can forgive myself and remind myself that I'm only human, just like you.

Now fear is the thing that keeps me from starting and see I'm good once I get started, usually provided I can keep my My magnificent magnifying mind focused on whatever it is I'm doing, but getting started, man, it's like, if you've raised kids, you've been here before. “Hey, would you mind taking out the garbage?”, “Yeah, I can't, I gotta do this and I can't do this, I gotta do that.”, there are a million reasons why a teenager can't do something and when I was raising kids, I started challenging them. “Okay, okay, I realize what you can't do, but what can you do? What can you do?” (The phrase, ‘Rome wasn't built in a day’, comes to mind). I do this myself. I go through this mental ‘gymnastic marathon’ of not trying to outsmart myself, but to convince myself, it doesn't matter when I start on whatever task it is, it only matters that I start. Once I get started, well then it gets a little easier.

Like, you know, say you're really, really hungry. You know the longest time of being hungry is right when the food is in front of you and you're taking the opportunity to start eating it? Those moments right before you put it in your mouth seems like the longest time. But once you start eating, usually you go until you're finished. The same thing applies with everything. You have to go, right? But you'll still try to do all these other little things, and then it becomes like an emergency. That's what I try to avoid, but I always end up there, so, I kind of consider that my normal. In the mornings, going through my routine, I try to make my bed. So that I can say to myself, “Well, the day wasn't a complete loss, at least I made my bed.” There are a myriad of things I could be doing. I could go practice guitar, I could work on a song, I could go check in on a friend, I could go watch television. I could do this, I could put away the dishes, I could watch television. I could go and write out this lyric, I could call a family member…I could watch television. Bet you can't guess what I almost always gravitate to. And therein lies the rub for me. It's my, my safety blanket, and this is what I'm working on.

I mean, everybody has a safety blanket. You have a go to place that you use to procrastinate. Everybody has one. And if you're honest, you'll realize what yours are.
You know, you might have multiple ones. You'll know what they are, because you'll be doing that while you think about the thing that you could or should be doing and while you're deciding on how to start that thing that you would or could be doing, you are caught in the grips of procrastination. This is why t's mind bogglingly difficult; you have to be honest and admit you're in a place you don't want to be. That personal accountability, it's hard. It's really hard. But you wouldn't have gotten where you are right now if you had not had dealt with it before.

This is the epitome of what I'm trying to convey. Procrastination is going to come; it's always going to come. It's in our nature to kind of put off the inevitable, we do it all the time. Earlier, you know, I talked about taking my blood pressure, taking medications. You do that to be aware of your health so that you don't have a heart attack or a stroke.
You do the best that you can to protect your health so that you don't die. Well, dying is inevitable, but that doesn't mean you want it to happen right now, there's things you want to do, right? Things you want to do, people you want to see, places you want to go. Everybody has those, that's what life is about. We're all doing the same thing. Procrastination is nothing more than the last ‘doorway’ so to speak, that one must walk through in order to start living. And sometimes it's really small. Sometimes that wait time, that deliberation time, it's really tiny and it's like, boom, you're in it. You're doing it, right, whatever it is. Like going to the gym.

How many of you like pull up at the gym and then sit in the car? You don't get out right away. You just sit in the car. How many people know full well that they're really, really hungry, but put off getting something to eat? When you know you need to do something and you put it off, delay it, it's only fear. Fear is like the big boogeyman of being human. But how do you get through it? How do you put it to the side and do it anyway?

It's been said that courage is an act not a thought. You can act and do courageous things before you're actually courageous. You can act ‘as if’ you're courageous. And it is in those acts that you find courage. Which seems really backwards, but in my experience, It's true. In all my performing career, walking out on stage is always scary. For me, even today, and I've been performing as long as I can remember, right before I say or sing the first word, that inhale is when I am the most fearful. But once, once you breathe in, you really don't have a choice. Sooner or later, you're gonna breathe out. So you better try something. And having the experience of performing, it's easier for me to, ‘well, I'm gonna say this’, or ‘I'm gonna do that’. Depending on what the performance is. You have these abilities. When it feels like you're not doing something, and then you start feeling some sort of way, ask yourself this, “If I started, where would I start?”, or better yet, “If I saw a friend of mine, my bestie, my BFF, didn't know where to start, what would I suggest to them if they were in my position?”, because sometimes the best answers come from someone else's behavior. Seeing someone else jump off the high diving board gave you the courage to climb up the high diving board and jump off yourself. There's a lot of life out there to observe.

Remember one species of human being, everybody's doing the same thing, but if you're putting off doing something, that's only because you haven't figured out how to manage the fear of failing to do whatever it is that you do. But if you do fail, what is it? What does that mean? Does it mean that you're never going to be able to try to do whatever it was again? No. Because as long as you're breathing you got a shot. Does it mean that you'll fail the next time? No, it doesn't. Because the future, all future, has yet to be written. But you have to take action.

So if you find yourself in a position where procrastination is obviously keeping you from moving forward with your day, your week, your month, I would suggest that you pick something small and gradually work your way up to that one thing you want to start. And then once you start, try to keep on the path until you're finished with that thing.
The nice thing about life, the nicest thing about life is that there's always going to be something else. if you keep breathing. There’s always going to be another decision that you get to make, there's always going to be the opportunity to learn, if you're paying attention and if you keep breathing. Cause I'm pretty sure once you stop breathing, not much else is really going to matter.

So I say that having shared where I'm at at this moment and I'm in the midst of procrastination, I started with describing my feelings about procrastination. I'm about to end and then I'm going to edit this episode, which takes a hell of a long time, and then I'm going to post it. The goal is to get it done as scheduled, so that it's available 9am, that's 9am pacific time, every Wednesday. And once it's done, on to the next…on to the next.

So what's next for you? Remember, start small, cause nobody eats a pizza all in one bite. Usually they cut it into slices, and then they eat each slice one bite at a time. J ust like life, one thing at a time.
Thanks for tuning in this week. I am The Wanz, your host of WANZOLOGY, and I'm gonna move on with my life and hopefully you will be blessed as you move on with yours.

I'll see you next week. Peace.