When I’ve Dreamt It I’ll Do It vs I Must Do It When I’ve Dreamt It: On Failing to Reflect on the Subject Thanks to Procrastination

   The day before yesterday, when I was working really hard to focus on drafting my covering letter to the second literary agent on my list, my obsessive thought tightened its grip on me, deftly chaining me to itself. It breathed down my neck, nagged at me to come on and just do what it wanted and glared me in the eye, all at the same time. Its chant for me to start acting on my dream to become a voice over artist sounded like an excited but deadly whisper, so still yet so loud – and before long the draft of that covering letter in front of me seemed entirely drowned out by the incessant mental noise. Indeed, I could not concentrate, at all, even though I did much, much, much more than try.

   As I discussed in this post, that ghostly mental chatter was the same one that had made me regret my decision not to intern at a radio station, for years on end. As a highly sensitive person, I had never minded thoughts like it. In fact, we coexisted in a sense, since I’d learnt to accept all my thoughts, for quite a while now. I let it stay. I was passive. Little did I realise that speaking on behalf of my dream, the ringing thought was expressing the frustration of the dream I’d unwittingly ignored. Did I just humanise my dream? Yes – dreams are after all alive, hence my dream’s cry for help. I consider myself lucky to have understood that this time, it was not procrastination that summoned me to abandon productivity and waste my life. Quite the opposite – deep down I knew that if I did not listen to my dream’s cry, I would be wasting my life proper. I was still in denial though. The harder my thought nudge me, the more I resisted by striving ever harder to focus on the covering letter I was drafting. The thought won. I kept finding myself returning to it and even acting on it, fingers tapping on my laptop keyboard, Googling video tutorials on how to use the YouTube Audio Library to select and add background music to my upcoming voice over demo.

 

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   It was two days ago when I recorded that voice over demo and surprise surprise or perhaps not, the day I wrote the previous paragraphs happened to be yesterday. Time and time again, I’d had to learn that words matter, even more so than I thought each time! In this instance, I found that the reason I procrastinated and missed the deadline I set for myself, yesterday, as I worked on this blog post, was its title. Indeed I did not choose the right words for this post which in retrospect definitely deserved better. I titled it ‘When I’ve Dreamt It, I’ll Do It’ before changing it to ‘I Must Do It When I’ve Dreamt It’ just minutes ago. The former, I have now understood, is full of the bitter flavour of procrastination, totally unlike that of coffee, my favourite drink in the world, but then I am biased, but then again who cares? Not me, because I’ll be me whatever you say. But then again I’ve digressed. See? That’s what procrastination does, or to be more responsible, that is what I do when I am procrastinating. Speaking of that, this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to, once more, retitle this post When I’ve Dreamt It I’ll Do It vs I Must Do It When I’ve Dreamt It. I used to despise the word ‘must’ with my whole heart, simply because it sounded a bit control freakish. Now I don’t dislike it as much I think, especially because to push myself out of my comfort zone, a must is occasionally a must. Not procrastinating is still out of my comfort zone since I’ve had such a long and toxic relationship with it. It has been my parasitic writing partner in a way.

 

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   It is now past 4pm on Saturday and so far, I have only posted one out of my three or four intended blog posts, all thanks to procrastination, as usual. The kinder, gentler internal voice tells me that it is OK to fail and embrace failure – that the fact that I am writing right now is already progress. I have come so far, from not writing a single blog post last week and I am definitely less insecure, although I have a lot to work on still. How do I know for certain that my insecurity has definitely decreased? First, from the fact that I have written one more post than last week and second, that I have listened to my dream, stopped making excuses and uploaded that voice over demo to YouTube as my first step towards realising my dream of becoming a voice over artist. Third, because I have got back on my feet and despite procrastination, started writing my second covering letter to literary agent no 2. If these aren’t (small but certain) triumphs, nothing are. Indeed, writing this post has reminded me of how I used to save myself from getting into trouble after procrastinating a bit too much as a university student when working on my assignments (mainly by doing my [self-prescribed] extra reading and by reading … too much into everything), I’d write reflective essays on procrastination, about how I failed to reflect on the topics I initially intended to explore. It worked though. I didn’t fail, but doing that too often, I have now relearnt, comes with the side effect of chronic guilt, so I need to stop… Anyway, I’ll just end this prematurely, having explored procrastination and made this piece as raw as it comes. That’s because I need to at least try to write my blog post no 3 of the week. Bye-bye then and sorry about the mess I’ve made of this blog post, when I’ve initially intended to discuss my process of recording and uploading my first voice over demo (which I misspelt ‘memo’ a moment ago and edited – look what procrastination could do? It could fry your brain up). Alright then! Leaving you with my first ever voice over recording as a bit of a bribe for my failed reflection. Please accept the bribe. I promise to do better next time 😂