When Procrastination Turns into Paralysis

You may have noticed a lack of activity here at The Modern Father; even our social channels have been rather quiet. While it is true that the discovery of Remote Play on the PlayStation did cause a sensation around here, it’s not the main cause of the silence. What started off as a little procrastination, some pleasure before work, evolved into full-blown paralysis. With so many things to do, it became impossible to pick one, get it done, then move on to the next. My To Do list turned into an indictment of character and a running tally of guilt and misery. It reached a point where all I did was get up, go to work, and come home. Once the boys were in bed, I would think about all I needed to get done, panic, then go and watch woodworking videos on YouTube.

So how did it get this way? And how did I recover?

It started with a plan

Oddly enough, the breakdown began with a scheduling change and the best intentions. For most of the year, a weekday began at 5 AM. This early wake-up time allowed me to complete my cystic fibrosis treatment before the boys woke up. I did the daycare run, which added about 30 minutes to my commute. Then summer happened. Since Jenny is a teacher, she keeps the boys home two days a week and does drop-off two other days. The remaining day I take one boy to daycare, while the other stays home for a special adventure day with Mama.

With my newfound freedom in the morning, I started to get up 30 minutes later. Rather than use it to write articles, I researched project ideas, topics of interest, and boring adult stuff (mostly finance stuff). It’s during this that I realized a bunch of things, the most important of which was that we should have refinanced our house months ago. I don’t know about everyone else, but I hate financial stuff. My goal in life was to always make enough money that I didn’t need to worry about things like balancing the checkbook, making a budget, or anything else. Then we went and had kids, so we had to say goodbye to the double income, no kids lifestyle. Needless to say, we need to do those boring things. And while I hate financial stuff, I also want to make sure I’m not getting screwed by any one bank or lender. This meant research. And I get a bit obsessive about it.

So two weeks of research later, I finally decide on the best institution: the bank we already use. So that was useful. I finally get the list of required documents from said bank, and that’s when things truly fell apart. In those weeks of research, I started to realize a couple of things: first, I hadn’t written any articles for The Modern Father, and there was a Tangential Parenting episode and an article from Jenny sitting in my inbox; and second, I had also let other items pile up around me, both in and around the house.

That’s when the panic set in.

Too deep, must dig deeper

With everything demanding my attention, my lifetime struggle with deadlines and meeting expectations came into play. Since middle school, if I didn’t complete a task or homework assignment, I would do everything I could to avoid the teacher, friend, or whoever else wanted something from me. Of course, this just made things worse. If I had just fessed up to forgetting to do something, it would be over, the guilt would lift, and we could continue on. Instead, I treated every situation like a relationship I wanted to end, so I ghost them all. Not the best coping mechanism.

When it comes to commitments to myself, a similar thing occurs. But I can’t just disappear from my own head, and I’m my own worst critic. So it just builds on itself, reinforces itself, and eventually forces me to shut down. And when it comes to strangers, I end up characterizing them as someone worse than myself. The reality is that the loan officer at the bank doesn’t care, but I think I’m ruining their life.

So I freeze, I stop working on anything, and I just kind of go into a funk. I do what I can’t avoid, but the rest just sits on a list, demanding attention. It sucks, and even though it’s been a lifelong issue, I also find it hard to identify it as the issue until it’s been a long time. Wait, I feel like crap because I’m not getting anything done? Why does that seem so familiar?

Climbing back out

In my case, I haven’t found a surefire cure. The only real solution I’ve found is identifying the one item that’s causing the most angst, and getting it done… eventually. Once that’s done, I find it easier to approach the rest of my list, or at least prioritizing it. The real catch is realizing that my problem isn’t a person, an event, or even a decision I made. And that’s why I call it paralysis. Much like the problem with being presented with too many choices and freezing, I have too many things to do, and I can’t deal.

So this is a long way of saying, “I’m sorry.” I’m feeling better now that I’ve gotten a few items off my plate, and I feel like my plans are moving forward again. I’m still in a bit of a funk, but the fact that I’m writing this at all is a good sign.

A new episode of Tangential Parenting should be posted soon, and that review by Jenny should be going up as well. I might space them out over the next week so I have some content while I get back into the swing of things. I also have some other plans in the hopper that I want to present in the future, but they aren’t quite ready for the public.