I promised I’d write about procrastination this week.
Wouldn’t ya know it, by deadline I just hadn’t been able to get to it.
Slumped in a puffy chair, my face pressed into the upholstered arm, I bemoaned, “Ugh, I have to write my post.” What a whiner!
I sat up and stared at the page thinking, “I should get up and stretch. No, just write. But the Oscars are on! Oh, look, and there’s laundry to fold. Do I see dirty dishes that need washing?”
ARGH!
Just then the award for best original screenplay came up. The author of the movie The King’s Speech won. As he thanked the Academy, at age 73, he said, “My father always told me I’d be a late bloomer.” Screen writer David Seidler stuttered as a child and overcame the condition, therefore finding deep compassion in crafting a script about a speech impaired king tasked with leading a nation to war. Seidler ended his address with, “to all the those who stutter, we now have a voice!”
After hearing his story, I was reminded of another late bloomer I knew. When I began my career as an exercise physiologist 20 years ago, a 65 year old woman came to me and said, “I need more upper body strength because I’m doing my residency at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the emergency department. There are a lot of big fellas who come in all hyped up on drugs and I need to hold them down while I stitch ’em up.”
I gawked at her tiny visage, all of 5 feet tall and weighing in at 90 lbs. “Residency?” I asked, “Um, when did you start medical school?”
“Well, I started my undergrad at 45 after the last of my ten kids were pretty much self-sufficient. I’ll be a full-fledged ER doc soon.”
And so she was. A mighty good one too — in one of the most difficult and dangerous hospitals in America. And she was strong because being so was her best means to carry out her passion of being a doctor. When training with me, she wore a t-shirt that said “You can’t scare me, I have teenagers.” Silly. But who better to serve a desperate ER than a mother of ten?!
These are my procrastination icons. They truly are inspiration for getting “it” done no matter what the circumstances. I’m inspired by their perseverance even when life distracted them to other causes.
Come on back tomorrow for more on where this procrastination message goes…
See you on Thursday’s PATH Ahead!