Dear Fellow Clerks,
This is your timely
reminder that today, Thursday, April 9, 2015, we will be holding the weekly
clerk lunch. If you are surprised by this fact, please see your doctor
immediately. This should NOT come as a surprise. After all, we've been holding
these weekly clerk lunches for well over a year. Why can't you get with the
program already?? I can't tell you the number of times I have been told
"oh, clerk lunch was today? I totally forgot!" How could you forget?
How? If you come or if you receive these emails then you must have noticed a
pattern by now. You get an email every week on Thursday and every week on
Thursday we all meet for lunch at the Standard. It's a pretty simple pattern to
see. Maybe these people are trying to spare my feelings and claim forgetfulness
when the truth is that they just didn't want to come. If that is the case, then
this is my response: "you are not hurting my feelings. I will give you a
hard time about not coming, but there are days when I don't attend. That's
alright. It is 100% ok to skip clerk lunch when you feel like it. Hence our
slogan (which I am just now making up) 'come if you want or don't, we just
don't give a rip.'" Hmmm, was that too combative? Did that seem mean? Oh
well. We'll just all have to deal today.
And now, on to more
pleasant (?) topics...
Today is all about the
art of procrastination. I have several tasks I need to get done today, not the
least of which is research on a civil motion for my judge, but I just can't
bring myself to do any of it. Today is a day of non-productivity. I feel
uninspired to work. It's gotten so bad that I even went out to Starbucks at
10:15 for a mid-morning break. What?? I don't take breaks! The world must be
ending. Has anyone looked out a window lately to see if the sky is falling?
Maybe we should get on that.
In any event, I keep
thinking about all the work I should be doing and then immediately start on
something else. I haven't been completely useless here at work. My
procrastination has been somewhat productive (so I guess calling it
non-productive is a misnomer and the word police will soon come to take me
away). I've managed to put away files, go through all my extra forms and
re-label them, reorganize several filing cabinets for my new JA Grace and look
at everything on the internet that I want to/can look at while at work. So, now
I'm bored and I don't have much left at my disposal to procrastinate with
(which could in fact be an explanation of this diatribe - a long-winded speech
on procrastination that is itself a tool of my procrastination). But the art of
procrastination is a serious thing and something a lot of people (I'm talking
to any generation older than our own) do not understand. In some ways I think
we need procrastination. Because the truth of the matter is, I just can't bring
myself to work on certain items until the last minute. If I try to force myself
to start researching motions before I feel I'm down to the wire then my mind
invariably wanders, I get bored, I get sleepy, bad things generally happen.
Without time constraints and that feeling of "oh sh**, I've got to get
this done or die!" I just can't seem to motivate myself. Whenever I
express this feeling to my mother or other...let's call them "grown
ups," I am met with the advice that "I should just do it right away
and be done with it. Wouldn't I feel better without it hanging over my
head?" Well, yeah. Of course. I'm not an idiot. But that doesn't mean that
I can actually do that. It doesn't mean that I can somehow dig up the proper
work ethic, motivation, or drive to work on something I really don't want to do
before I absolutely have to do it.
Is this just a symptom of our generation?
And if yes, then what is the cause? And let's not go with something simple and
stupid like (said in a mock grown up voice) "well, our generation has been
inundated with immediate gratification for our entire lives and have never had
to work hard for anything and therefore does not appreciate just how good we
have it or the concept of putting in hard work." That's a cop out and it's
insulting. And it assumes that all generations before ours have had to work hard
and no one else in the history of humanity has ever had it easy. That is just
ridiculous. Each generation has had it's individual hardships that differ from
the generation before. Just because they are not the same hardships doesn't
mean they don't exist and/or are invalid. But, perhaps this isn't a symptom of
our generation. Perhaps it's just a symptom of humanity. Or maybe this is all
much simpler. Maybe this is just a symptom of me. Am I the only person around
here who feels this way? Am I the only person procrastinating?? Whoa. I've
reached a new level of crazy now. But this is a serious issue. Is
procrastination even something we need to fix? I suppose it is if you
procrastinate to the point of actually failing to complete tasks, but what if
you actually get everything done? Is it ok to procrastinate if all it does is
inspire you to work harder at the last minute? Unfortunately, I have no answer.
But I do have a philosophical question that needs pondering, which will
probably take up the rest of my afternoon...and that's one more point on the
side of procrastination.
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