The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. - Bertrand RussellI might come from a long legacy of procrastinators. The Mraz’s who fled the former Czechoslovakia just prior to World War I may have been the last in our family to be on time. However, after arriving in the USA, none bothered to bring a cut of the family tree or carry on with the language, much less keep track of each other thru the 20th century, unless of course they planned to, but – being Mraz’s, just never got around to it.
My grandfather Papa Razz, passed away when I was 14. In my memory, he was the tallest of all men, designed like a totem pole with stories carved out of his wrinkled smile. He carried an heir of mystery in his silence and in his sarcasm. His eyes sunk deep within his Buddha squint hidden behind frosted glasses. In his lap, I looked up to him as a great whiskey breathed sage. It was hard to imagine his enormous hands having the daintiness to clutch a comb and run it thru his shiny handsome locks, but his hair was always dapper, even in his tattered work clothes and high wasted jeans. He was a welder for most of his years, but for a lifetime and then some, everyone knew him as Frank D. Fixer.
Long after Mr. Fixer was called to fix angel’s wings up in heaven, my father and I were delegated to tidy up his shop and/or finish some tasks that were always promised to our widowed grandmother. Old cars and trucks and old car and truck parts created a maze in the junk yard adjacent to the family compound. There was also a wealth of farm equipment, much of it looking like axles, scraps, and plows abandoned during the dust bowl. And then there were millions of other tiny bits saved and stored in cabinets and cans that I’ll never know the uses for. To my brother and sister and cousins, it was the ideal hide-and-seek refuge. To other folks, it may have been Sanford & Son. But, my Dad and I (Dad mostly) cleaned (some of) it up little by very little.
My Dad is quite possibly the smartest guy on the planet. He taught me everything there is to know about not having to work for a living but rather, how to live your dream and make it work. He was a fine example simply by working (almost) everyday of my life. As a fence contractor, he’d come home after dark with salty sweat stains soaked through the brim of his hat and holes in his repeat workday clothes. His pleasant petrol based odor reminded me how fun and easy it is to just sing and entertain people. And thanks to my grade point average, if I didn’t follow my heart, all I’d have to fall back on is being my Dad’s sidekick on the job site. I wasn’t cut out to be a foreman and Dad knew that. He took me to every audition far and wide just to make sure I was taking advantage of every opportunity to be heard. I could always sense his vicarious intentions. A win for me would be a win for the whole team.
But my Dad is also a very sly guy. While he did introduce me to my ambition, he was also my first teacher of
Taking It Easy. I have to write it that way because it is a way of life. Being at ease is what the Buddha himself and many Bodhisattvas, Yogis, Swamis, and Saints have been encouraging for centuries.
One Christmas, all I really hoped for was permission to build a half-pipe (skate ramp) in our backyard, with Dad’s skilled construction assistance and finances of course. Our yard was a huge lot that spilled onto an expansive field of soybeans. I had big dreams for the rural space. I saw myself climbing up the walls and eventually launching into the air off the lip. I was a pretty good street skater in those days but I had never actually learned to ride a ramp. So for Christmas I received a few pieces of wood to get us started; wood that would serve as a coupon until the weather was warm enough to start building or, as luck would have it, until the coupon expired.
I never gave my Dad a hard time about not building the ramp. Maybe I joked about it a few times, but I respected his other duties, such as providing for our family and all, even if he did get out of Christmas by giving his son a few pieces of wood scraps from the back of his truck. More than that, I respected his manner of procrastination. Could that man sleep in! Wow. It was inspiring really. So much that it would eventually become my own model for business.
A few years went by and still no ramp, but I finagled a deal with him to get a really cheap car, which would get me to and from school or around town, depending on my cleverness to successfully dodge class or not.
One day I was skipping school en route to some fun and I drove passed my house. It was midday and I spotted my Dad’s truck at home when I knew he was supposed to be at work. I made a bet that he was sleeping. When I arrived home later, at the time I respectively should be arriving home after a full day at school, my Dad leapt out of bed and made like he had just come home and was taking a short nap before heading back out. Yea right, I thought. And I’ve been at school all day.
I don’t want this post to bother or bust on my Dad or anyone in my clan about the awesomeness and über-randomness that is our family’s potential for procrastination. So what if every April we drove to the big post office downtown at midnight to barely get the taxes delivered on time. Big deal if we didn’t take the Christmas tree down for two consecutive years but instead just added more decorations. I know everyone on earth battles with this disease. You can see it in the rise of online scrabble; posting a plethora of scores instead of sending our dear ones a grandparent’s day card. Sudoku now has it’s own section at bookshops. And technology advances at such a rate that we’re losing jobs to robots, and not necessarily so we can get things done faster, but to have more time off obviously. Is there really an unemployment crisis occurring in the United States or has everyone just collectively decided to stay home?
Procrastination was my topic when I sat down to write today. I’d put off posting a blog (among everything else) for long enough. To beat procrastination I knew I had to look it in the eye, examine its caliber and understand where it comes from. And while I had hoped to create something quick and funny about my family and our history of unfinished business, I’m finding the process cathartic and insults difficult. According to my own review, my father and his dad before him weren’t lazy men at all. In fact, they worked harder than I might ever work in my life. And I’m lucky to have spent any amount of time with either of them between their laborious and sometimes round the clock shift.
I didn’t need the skate ramp. I might’ve cracked my head open and/or never pursued music. And it was funny having the Christmas tree up all year. In the summer when my Dad and Step-mom went on Vacation, we’d illuminate the tree in the window for our friends and neighbors to shame. And who cares if taxes are late? Isn’t there a conspiracy going around that the IRS isn’t lawful anyway? And as for the trash my grandfather left behind, well, it’s become our treasure and a pleasurable way to keep his presence alive in the yard.
I’ve been putting off writing to the public because my sentences as of late have been scatterbrained and incomplete. I haven’t wanted to write about hotels and airports, and those things come up a lot as a tourist, so I stray from the keypad. And I haven’t had any urges to share travel tips or suggest do-it-yourself projects because lately, I have people that do almost everything for me. Nor have I been acknowledging the holidays, birthdays and earth days that have come and gone while emails and phone calls continue to be ignored.
As a professional procrastinator I blame Planet Mercury for being in retrograde and screwing with my gadgets and their inability to get a connection. I also blame Venus for steering me back onto the course of love and courtship, which everyone knows requires nothing else to be done except craft love poems and take naughty pictures. And I blame pot, which sucks, because there are so many wonderfully safe and practical uses for the stuff, but goal accomplishment is not one of them. I also use Zen Buddhism as an excuse for my procrastination since the analysis of everything ultimately leads to love, emptiness, or silliness; all of which enlighten you to stop worrying about the big picture and to go get some ice cream. And I blame the Nashville Country Music (1/2) Marathon for sounding like a worthy opponent and offering a great way to blow off all the excess energy I have thanks to a decrease in typing. Therefore I should also account my truancy on the Academy of Motion Pictures for I do love the cinema. And I blame Global Warming and that
plastic island the size of Texas, just because it needs to be mentioned again.
And now it’s done. I’ve written and posted something. Spoken like a true procrastinator who’s always proud to have made a minimum effort at the last possible second. But then again,
the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Sincerely,
Procrastination Jason
