I’m Sue, a one-time server, now fisheries biologist, and I want to tell you how the last two years have changed me. This way, maybe you can skip all the uncertainty and self-doubt and nip your bad habit of procrastination in the bud before you face the consequences that I did.
2020 started off okay. I was working ungodly hours at a bar/restaurant and never seemed to have any free time or a chance to take a vacation, but that was just life. The cost of living in my area was pretty high, so I never seemed to have enough left over at the end of the month to put money away for a rainy day. Well, that rainy day came in a big way when the pandemic shut everything down.
Fortunately, the guy who owned the place really cared about his staff and did what he could to keep at least some money coming our way. The problem was, that money wasn’t nearly enough, and to get more money, I would need to apply for a bunch of different programs such as unemployment and rent assistance. For most people, it would have been a relatively simple matter, but for a procrastinator like me, it turned into a huge ordeal that almost sunk me.
Falling Behind
The thing is, I knew that thanks to a moratorium on evictions, my landlord couldn’t kick me out. Other than that, though, I had to quickly apply for all these things, and it seems like every time I do this, I run into some issue. This time was no different. When I finally applied for unemployment, I was told that I didn’t qualify, even though I was no longer on the books at the bar.
What followed was a horrible one-step-forward, two-steps-back ordeal that lasted basically the entire length of the lockdown. Meantime, I couldn’t qualify for rental assistance because I couldn’t prove I was on reduced income. This put me in a downward spiral that really had me thinking there was no way out, and it was all fueled by my aversion to paperwork and my constant habit of waiting till the last minute to complete even such a critical application as unemployment.
Rudderless
By the time my unemployment was approved, places were starting to open back up. My old boss couldn’t provide me full-time work, so I ended up staying on unemployment for longer than I really wanted. But this did at least allow me to retroactively apply for rental assistance, which in turn allowed me to get out of the impossible hole I found myself in.
More than anything, though, the lockdown and subsequent time on unemployment left me with more time on my hands than I’d ever had in years. While that may seem like a good thing, it quickly got old. I had nowhere to be and no one around for company. This led to me eating too much, drinking too much, and basically wandering around in a fog that I didn’t know how to lift. Eventually, I started wondering whether my life was really where I wanted it to be.
Down The Rabbit Hole
Once you start thinking about your life and what brought you to you where you are, your mind can go in all kinds of directions, many of them dark. I was working at that bar because when I came out of college, jobs in my particular scientific field were hard to come by. I had experience in the service industry, and I wanted to get out of my town, so I moved to a city I liked and got to work. After that, I kind of got swept away by the lifestyle until before I knew it, it was five years later, and I wasn’t even searching to see if I could find a job in the career I had once thought was my life’s dream. That would require sitting in front of a computer and filling out applications, two things I couldn’t stand doing for any length of time.
Going out in the woods and observing wildlife had seemed really interesting in school, but now it seemed incredibly boring and very far away. But if I didn’t at least give that a shot, what was the alternative? I didn’t want to just keep serving drinks, did I?
Managing or owning a bar or restaurant was fraught with its own challenges and didn’t seem like something I wanted to shoot for, either. Was I where I found myself because I hadn’t been tenacious enough when I got out of school? Had my tendency to procrastinate caused me to jump on the first thing I could think of to get my life moving?
Have You Ever Woke Up One Day and Wondered What The Hell You Were Doing with Your Life?
That’s what was happening to me as the summer of 2020 stretched into fall and the restrictions on bars and restaurants started tightening yet again.
At this point, I started to really take stock of where I was and where I wanted to be, but I wondered if I really had the strength to change anything.
As fall turned to winter, I was aimlessly browsing the web when I came upon a site that asked questions which drew me out of my stupor. It forced me to really evaluate myself and my mental state right at that moment.
Virtue Map caused me to come face to face with how much my procrastination had governed how I was living my life. The program prepared a three-month plan specifically customized to help me overcome my procrastination and reduce or release its hold on my day-to-day routine. The price was reasonable, and the daily time commitment of less than 10 minutes seemed doable, so on the most boring New Year’s Eve I could remember, I decided to pursue this and see where it led.
Remembering Who You Are
It started off slow, but revealing. Every day, I would get an email that would peel back a layer of what was causing my procrastination and how it was manifesting itself in my life. Along with that came a task that would either help me to more deeply explore why I was feeling that way or to work toward overcoming it. After two weeks, I had a much better idea of why I was the way I was.
After a month, I began to feel the change in me as I woke up for another day. I had a new sense of purpose and a new routine that allowed me to look at life through a lens that did not include the possibility of procrastination.
Two months down the road, the ways forward were really starting to take shape. Nothing much seems possible when you’re stuck in limbo. Virtue Map allowed me to identify and rearrange my pessimistic mindset so that I could truly take stock of my life and the opportunities I had in front of me.
As spring came and brought with it vaccines and the lessening of restrictions later in the season, my situation began to come into sharper focus. I realized that if I didn’t at least explore the opportunities available as a wildlife biologist, I would never know whether I was missing out on my passion in life.
So, even though it actually meant earning less money and moving to an area that was unfamiliar, I sat down, searched for available opportunities, and filled out all the paperwork. It was at this point that I truly realized what Virtue Map had done for me. I was astounded when I was able to do all this without any thoughts of how much I was wasting my time or even the inkling to put it off till the next day. It was just a fact of life and not a big deal.
Now, I’m exploring my prior passion here in the Colorado River basin. And though there have been some bumps along the road as my field deals with the pandemic, I’m definitely getting the experience that I had denied myself all these years.
Is this for me over the long term? I still can’t say. But I do know I’m better off for finally having overcome the ravages of procrastination and plodding along in the same old routine just because I didn’t feel like doing what it took to change it.
Rather than letting the uncertainties of 2022 leave me paralyzed, I’m excited by what might come my way.
And if I can break out of my routine and leave my procrastination behind, you can, too. You owe it to yourself to click the link below; take the survey (and be honest); and enroll in your customized anti-procrastination plan.
Because believe me, regardless of what you choose to do afterward, you will feel better once you truly take command of your life.
Right now, just like I did in 2021, you have the chance to begin 2022 by discovering the real you. I hope you find the strength to take it.