I tend to wait till the last moment to execute plans.
More times than not things get screwed up.
It has been a lifelong practiced behavior and it is time to change.
Yesterday was Valentines Day and I f*&ked it up.
Valentine’s falls on the same day every year, February 14. That gives me 364 days to plan for the event and I usually leave it until Feb 13th or sometimes the 14th to execute.
This year I knew exactly what I was going to get her – a picture we had found at an antique dealer a few weeks prior. Since I was on a golf trip the weekend before Valentine’s day and returning on the Monday after Super Bowl, I was going to get the picture, which was ½ mile from my office on Tuesday the 14th, and give it to her at our dinner date. At 10:03 am I left my office and drove the .62 miles to the antique store and BAM! – they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Are you f-in kidding me?
And, now it starts. I know this rodeo – Scramble Time. Listen, I could just have just executed my failsafe plan, my go to, my “when all else fails” move – The Orchid play. It works every time. But she got me cologne from Italy for gods sake, ITALY! She ordered it 3 weeks ago. I had to elevate my game.
I spent most of yesterday trying to improvise, adapt and overcome. Needless to say, it failed. I got the wrong the bath stuff, candy she doesn’t like along with a few other failures. I rushed it and the finished product failed. She didn’t care about what I got her. She never does.
And, although “it’s the thought that counts,” when I committed to getting her something special, it should be thoughtful. It shows that I care enough to do it right.
After 21 years, I should know what candy she likes. After 1000 baths, I should know what bath stuff she likes. I was more concerned with just getting something because I was pressed for time, then I was with getting the right something.
Throughout my years in school, whether high school, college or graduate school, I always left studying to the night before. That is probably why I was a very average to below average student. My junior year of college I lived with 4 friends in a house off campus. And, unlike now where you can write papers on your phone or use ChatGPT, everyone didn’t really have computers back in 1988. I used to write my papers at the University computing center. As was my typical routine, I had a paper due on Monday morning and I was in the computing center on Sunday night pulling close to an all-nighter to start and finish the assignment due the next day at 11:00am. I finished writing the paper at 3-3:30 am and went home. I walked into the house and the back door was open, but I didn’t really think too much about it. At 8:30 the next morning my roommate woke me up and asked if I had moved my stereo and speakers. I said “No, why would I?”. “Well” he said, “then we got robbed.” Sure enough, we got robbed. They took a bunch of stuff from the house, including my stereo and speakers, clothes and other stuff. We called the police and then an entertaining chain of events happened. The officer walked into the house and immediately asked if one of my roommates was home. And he was. The officer then proceeded to tell him that he would have to take him down to the station because he had unpaid parking tickets. Something in the range of 50-60. The officer got all our statements, told us if we discovered anything else missing to call him and he would add it the report and then took our roommate down to the station.
After returning home from the station, my roommate had to turn around and get to class. But, he couldn’t find his keys. And then, looked outside, and realized his car was gone. The thieves had taken all of our stuff, took his keys off the counter and loaded it into his car and left. But, he did not realize his car had been stolen until after returning from the station. It was a very funny call he made to the police officer telling him he needed to add a stolen item to the report – his BMW!
We would ultimately find out that the robbers were at the house close to the time I had returned home from the computing center, and maybe had only left 20-30 minutes before I had returned home. Now, what if I had been home that night and not writing feverishly to finish my paper? Although my roommates were and I never did understand how they didn’t hear them, what if I was home and heard them? Who knows what would have ensued. But I wasn’t home. I was at the computing center crafting a mediocre paper (if I had more time to create a rough draft and edit it, it might have been really good) just hours before it was due. I had convinced myself back then that my procrastinating nature had saved my life.