Deadlines

Something was due. He knew this and it made him uneasy, rolled around in his stomach, punched him in the gut every time he thought about it. He tried the normal routes of procrastination: the painting of the walls, the cleaning of the bathroom, the mopping of the floors, the washing of the cats. Even these things, once completed, did not not sate his need to forget his impending doom. He drinks copious amounts of coffee, hoping that somehow the caffeine will block the neurotransmitters from firing, that he will fall into a coma and not have to deal with the deadlines. He searches the web for mental diseases, comes across a site for Huntington’s disease. The caption underneath the logo reads, “A disease of mind and body.” He thinks this will suffice and begins reading the symptoms: depression, mood swings, forgetfulness, lack of coordination, personality changes, decreased mental capability, slurred speech, and memory loss. He has all of these, is sure of it, focuses in on the severity of his situation. Somehow knowing that he is doomed to die via Huntington’s eases his worries. “I mean, if I am going to die shortly anyway, what really do a few deadlines really mean in the grand scheme of things?” he thinks to himself. He knows there must be a better way to do this, to avoid getting stressed out, that surely imagining one’s death to avoid physical manifestations of procrastination gone awry cannot be the most healthy decision. He takes a deep breath. “These things will pass,” he tells himself. But then he is thinking of all the year’s to come, all those deadlines of papers due, essays submitted, working papers being sent off to editors, being marked and diced and being sent back to him for revisions.

He is on the floor now in the fetal position and the cats are licking his hair. He notices how dirty the floor is from this point of view, thinks to himself that perhaps he should sweep and mop and remembers that he has already done that and checks it off of his list of possibilities. The pencils and stacks of paper taunt him from atop his desk, tell him he’ll never get it done, that once he sits down he will be in their control and fours hours later will awake only to find that he has written sixteen pages on the benefits of brushing one’s teeth in circles instead of sideways motions. As he topples to the floor from his chair, the pencils and papers will cackle. The deadline will be missed. He will hear the shredding of his grades, the red, downward slashing movements of the teacher’s pens, the “I’m sorry” statements of the doctorate programs in their one paragraph rejection letters. He looks up into the blinding white light in the middle of his ceiling, presses his hands to his temples, tries to go to sleep.

Two minutes pass and he remembers something, takes a succession of deep breaths. He realizes he is no longer ten and in need of adult approval, that the teacher is a mere hood ornament at this point in his pursuit of knowledge, that deadlines are fictitious like so much else, that there is so much else that is far worse than a deadline and that this is a choice that he has made. He doesn’t need to be doing this, can choose to do something else. But he wants to be here, wants to have the deadlines, likes the pressure and the eventual results. “At the end of the day, everything will be fine,” he thinks and he is calm now, knows that he need not worry, calmly stands, stretches his arms. With a determined calm, he takes a seat to begin writing.

The polishing of the kitchen tiles will wait for another day and with fervent determination, he presses pencil into paper.