But then something changes, and somehow we begin to thrive off them.
At least, that’s what a couple of my grad school teachers said
about me. And it seems to be true. Most of the time, I am more likely to do the
bulk of the work a day or so before it’s due. And that’s not completely caused
by procrastination. I will work on copy edits, for example, over the span of a
full weekend after receiving the work on a Thursday and still pull an
all-nighter in order to turn in everything by Monday morning. If I had chapters
due for a class or workshop, they would be written a day before the
deadline.
It’s not as if I like doing this, either. I would love to
pace myself and work on little bits at a time. But there’s just something about
deadlines that forces me to work. Some imperative compulsion that keeps me
rooted to the computer and better able to reject distractions. The way it
feels earlier in the week, the project is not yet important enough to deny other
things in my life, or I feel as if there’s still more time to work on it. And
then as the day draws closer, I realize that there is no time left and then try not to panic.
Sometimes I wonder if I work well with deadlines because of
my journalism experience. We’re given an assignment that is due that afternoon,
the next day, or at the end of the week. We’re forced to get used to deadlines
and actually work off them. It almost creates a co-dependency with an abstract
concept. When we’re given a project that isn’t due until the end of the month,
we look around as if we’re lost and wonder what we’re going to do with our time
between now and then. It becomes as if we can only do work if we’re under a
deadline. Is that why I thrive under them? Is that why I can’t seem to break
the habit of doing most of the work the day before something is due?
Is that why I haven’t been writing in my stories—because I
don’t have any more deadlines? Or someone to hold me accountable for my work?
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