A Tale of Procrastination (for you to read later…)

Halloween.  One of the first words you think of when you think of Halloween is pumpkins; they just kind of go hand-in-hand right?

This year, each trip I made to the store starting in late September I thought “I need to get some pumpkins.” But as my trips would progress, my cart would become too full to accommodate any pumpkins (mom to five, remember?  I can barely fit a Kit Kat bar in my cart at the end of a grocery store trip).  Every week I would tell myself I need to make a pumpkin-buying trip but my procrastination game is strong.  Cue the night before Halloween.

Nothing motivates me like the last minute so the night before Halloween I decided to get serious about these pumpkins.  I jumped in my car and went to the mall parking lot (where I got our pumpkins last year).  Relief waved over me as I saw a man dressed in a pumpkin suit hanging out around a bunch of pumpkins.  That seems like a pretty sure thing, right?

Well.  Procrastinating works out most of the time but not all of the  time (fistbump to my fellow procrastinators reading this who know exactly what I mean!).

I approached the pumpkin scene and my heart sank a little as I realized… these are all decorative pumpkins.  The normal pumpkins had sold out.  I considered buying them anyway and just making the best of it, but I just don’t have any experience with decorative pumpkins and wasn’t up for rolling the dice on Hallow’s Eve.  Additionally, I had a specific photo in mind and didn’t think it would work very well with a decorative pumpkin.  And, hey, no big deal there’s surely more somewhere else.  And so my pumpkin journey began.

Nothing at the mall.

Nothing at Super One.

The inevitably disappointed looks on my kids’ faces fueled my motivation to keep checking.

Nothing at Walmart.

Nothing at Cub.

Cue a bead of sweat falling down my face.

Nothing at Walgreens.

Nothing at the random gas stations I drove by at a snail’s pace because someone had said they saw some at a gas station.

Nothing.

No pumpkins.

I should have known better; procrastination and I go way back.  I reflected on past stories of my procrastination:

That time I tried buying boots after it already snowed and there was virtually nothing left to buy.  The time we back-to-school shopped right before school started and most of the cool backpacks were gone.  The time I thought to buy something “next time” only to have it be gone.  All the times I needed something and put it off too long.  But never did I think there would be no pumpkins!  In most cases I would just let the whole pumpkin thing go at this point.

Procrastination:  1
Christine: o

But something more was motivating me this year:  I have a six month old and I want to take a photo of her sitting in a pumpkin!  This isn’t something you can just put off until next year.  She’ll be 1 1/2 and I don’t think she’ll be squeezing into any pumpkins!  Nope, the time is now, and so I begin to solicit my friends.  My amazing, sweet, poor, unsuspecting friends.

  

And you know what?  My friends came through.  I got a nice big one from a friend for my baby-in-a-pumpkin photo, and I got four nice smaller ones for my kids to carve and have a fun pumpkin-carving experience.  I offered to pay them for these pumpkins, but of course they said no.  They were monetarily free but they did cost me a nice slice of pride – a price worth paying for the sweet photos and the happiness of my kids.

I guess where I’m going with all this is that life is busy.  So many of us are scraping by, doing things at the last minute – or forgetting to do them at all.  We’re busy doing homework and making sure there’s clean laundry in the dressers, that you begin thinking I’ll do that later to the things that can be put off, while we manage the things that shouldn’t be put off… and sometimes we put them off too long.

From a veteran procrastinator, my advice is to not give up right away, things almost always work out if you’re open to looking for other solutions.  If you miss a deadline, simply asking if you can make up the work another way can often work.  In the examples I listed above, we were able to get what we wanted by going to other stores and/or ordering online (hello, Amazon Prime two day shipping!).  So many of us give up as soon as we feel we have dropped the ball.  Things almost always work out if you are determined to make them!

My other piece of advice is to learn from your mistakes.  When I learned it was going to snow this year, I went out and bought snow gear the night before it snowed because past experience taught me that snow gear gets wiped out fast!  Procrastination is quite a beast but it can be tamed.

And next year, I will be buying pumpkins well in advance – and maybe some extras too in case someone I know finds themselves in an unfortunate pumpkin predicament!