On Procrastination

The thing deferred is sometimes the very thing we are eager to do immediately: write a letter to a friend; or a poem: the dragonfly stopped here like a comma; craft a collage... We put it off out of a sense of duty to get done what is necessary: may it even be the work we have picked so joyfully. And both are left untouched. The postponement of the first thing works like magical thinking: since it is the first thing, not doing it will only defer the initial moment of doing the other. It seems to carry with it the promise of the past, of the time when there was time for everything, as incredible as childhood, that will awake again as soon as the first thing is done.