professionally procrastinating

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

Well, she wasn’t actually that little, at least not age-wise. In fact, she was a college student, in her second year of studies. She was generally a hard worker- when it came to things that interested her. Which meant that she spent hours immersed in music, art, culture, and creative writing. Trite assignments for classes that didn’t relate to her? Not quite so much.

Despite being a technical adult, she often found herself getting mistaken for a ten-year-old. Waitresses constantly gave her children’s menus, which she occasionally accepted because, hey, cheaper food. It was embarrassing when she got mistaken for the daughter of her friends though. It was bad enough that she had been an awkward third wheel, but to be mistaken for a child of her friends was incredibly painful. Even if it meant she did get her coffee cheaper that day.

On this fine September evening, this girl found herself procrastinating, as usual. Her WiFi was not cooperating, so she used that as her excuse. Besides, she technically didn’t have any homework for tomorrow. Did she have stuff she could work ahead on? Definitely. Should she be doing that? Probably. Was she going to do that work? Absolutely not.

Instead, she sat at her desk and stared at the stacks of books she was required to purchase at inflated prices for her classes this year. There were quite a few of them. She frowned, realizing that this was the life of an English major.

She also scanned her many mugs and considered decorating another one so she could add to the collection of stuff she didn’t need. She wondered how she was going to get these mugs home without breaking any of them.

Her mind wandered and she wrote for a while, working on a manuscript for a sappy teen romance novel featuring characters that were eerily similar to her and attractive male celebrities. Likewise, she wrote poetry about pretty boys with pretty eyes.

After looking through her outdated iTunes library, she listened to one of Justin Bieber’s albums in its entirety, and she genuinely enjoyed it.

She researched prices of flights to Europe and considered how angry her parents would be if they found out she had dropped out of college and moved to a small English town. She would work in a hostel and write novels under a pen name that was actually an anagram for her name. She tried to think of anagrams for her name, then scratched that idea.

Then she wrote a blog post about herself in third person, so as to distance herself from her actions.

Finally, she pulled out the dreaded binder filled with lined paper and the tears of small children. She begrudgingly read 50 pages or so (she definitely did not skim at all) of classic literature or something and took as many notes as she could muster. Next came another binder of disappointment, and she studied her notes out of that binder. She considered the fact that she probably should have done this sooner, considering it was now past midnight. But she figured there’s no use living in the past.

And she smiled to herself, because she had successfully completed an entire day, which was a greater accomplishment than most people thought. Every day was a gift for her, and she just felt blessed to be alive.