Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

new- my lil story

hi, okay so I am 23 year old female. all my life I have been different. I hate writing. actually I don’t hate writing, its just that I want to say so much, especially in an introduction like this so that everyone knows 'where i'm coming from' and will relate to me/understand me more easily. well I have always been different when I was young and now I have adhd. very severely, obviously as a child it went undiagnosed b/c I was little girl behaving like a bad boy so they all just thought I was bad. i’m an only child and I suffer from what one of my friends calls the only child syndrome. hahah which is that when I was growing up my mom or my babysitter did everything for me, made sure I had everything before I left the house etc. etc. so now I never do it myself. my mom has always done EVERTHING for me. I mean not everything, i’m independent but she always does shit for me like set up my phone account all that shit.

 I don’t know how but I graduated high school. after many high schools. got kicked out of some elementaries and one high school. but I always felt guilty about it. ive always felt guilty about EVERYTHING. (but then when im yelling at myself inside my head, i say "well, obviously not GUILTY ENOUGH- cause at least then you wouldda done SOMETHING ABOUT IT!") when I did the work I did it well, but if I didn’t think I could do a perfect job, I would just not hand it in. then I forced my self to go to uni in another city far away. I don’t know why the fuck I did that but I guess I was trying to do the 'conventional' thing, I wanted to be a lawyer and protect other ppl. I love working with kids though. also when I was 18 I was finally diagnosed with adhd.I had already seen many therapists and stuff and had been on a few different anti-depressants throughout high school. then when I got my official adhd diagnosis , I also got an official major depression syndrome diagnosis. the adhd meds helped, i’m still on them. adderal. I LOVE MY PSYCHIATRIST. i mean it, love. not sexual love but love because he is understanding, not pretentious or condescending and just a good man, and a good doctor.(even though i havent seen him in almost a year- hes in my home city) I used to sleep all day. ALLFUKING DAY! hahah and then during high school and uni i lived the crusty lazy disguting depressed student life: sleep all day, smoke weed, eat. or when I was younger and more rowdy, sleep, get up  and go to the fucken club. 
 
 I have been in a codependent relationship with a good friend who later turned into a crack addict and it rendered him unable to live anything other than the street life in and out of jail. I think about him always and it breaks my heart. I  have close connections, understanding, empathy and tightly pulled heartstrings (because of myself and others) to mental disorders/problems and addiction.

  anyway I did okay in uni, a fail one year when I went through a major depression, and straight as (and b's) a next year when I got myself into a good routine of smoking joints and studying. I was majoring in philosophy. very interesting yes, but not enough motivation to keep me going, to make me go to class and write all those fucken essays! as a hobby, yes I love it and am very intersted and enjoy analyzing things,but otherwise, I cant do it anymore. I NEED A START AND AN END TO THNINGS, m mind already has an endless banter between reasons and shit going inside all day. i live and think in the grey areas. philosophy as a degree- the whole philosophy university class, the power of the professor, the prentioussness and insecurity of the students, the self-righteousness, its just something I don’t wanna fucken be involved in. I always knew that but I liked philosophy and I thought I wanted to get my BA cause I was sure I wanted to  go to law school. can you imagine! what the fuck was I thinking? I mean I still would maybe one day wanna be a lawyer, but I barely learned how to write a fucken essay in highshool! in uni, it would take me HOURS AND HOURS to finally write something. days and days of NOTETAKING and  hundreds of these fucken notebooks filled up with point form notes and full pages of 'practice'' writing the essay. FUCK! anyway, now i’m in my last year. actually just finished it. haha I don’t know why I call it last year, cause it SHOULD be my last year but its not. my parents were always- teddi we want you to do something YOU want to do, you don’t have to go to uni just be happy. but I was all like "no" I have to go to uni, I like it, i’m smart. I thought only things that were excruciatingly hard and painstaking for me were worth doing.

  anyway, now i’m working. I failed this whole year. I spent this first term working out like  fiend, talking on the phone with my friends (including my addict love) and another close freidnw hile they were in jail. organizing my life around when they were gonna call.knowing that it was an escape, easier than actually living. feeling totally socially isolated. how could i talk to my jail freidns and then talk to these university students with their commerece and their theses and keg parties? i mean my other friends at home-yes, but not here. anyway, so i was wasting my life away. too paralyzed and anxious SOOOOOOOOOOOOO ANXIOUS. too anxious to go to class or try my work, I went at the beginning, obviously, as usual, but one thing, then the next. then it all slid out of my control.also, the older I get the depression which used to manifest itself in lack of motivation and constant lethargy has changed to manifest itself through extreme anxiety now. its better than it was during first term, but first term was the highest level of anxiety i've ever experienced. well actually it started in second year, I had a panic attack. it was more on the inside, but  caused me to physically flee where I was. in first term, my anxiety literally paralyzed me and I confined myself to my small bachelor apartment and the gym. then second term I was like fuck this i’m working, I know I love working, I finally knew at least that something wasn’t working and work makes me feel good and I had to do that. so I started working part time at a clothing store I like it I have a lot of responsibility. i’m top sales, so good an all that. 
 
 but now its summer, I don’t know what the fuck i’m doing here next year, I was gonna go a community college out here and get my drug counseling certificate but it was full. now I might go back and just try once more to finish up my fucking BA which I've already invested four years of my time and PARENTS MONEY And I feel like  a cunt for that. but I WANNA GO HOME! I miss my city at home (Toronto) I miss my friends, we all still talk and my friends at home are my family as well. absolute trust I have with my small group of friends.
 
 anyway, now i’m working. I procrastinate all day. I have all my life .ALWYAS.ALWAYS ALWAYS> I have dabbled with other drugs, I still use alcohol and marijuana, either recreationally or as a way of escape. I go through phases. I also use food as an escape, eat so much till I cant move. i’m not overweight though, luckily, as with my other vices, the food stuff is in phases. but there have been times in my life when one of these vices were my drug of choice. but my first drug of choice, the one I always go back to, the one I always use, is procrastination. escape. avoidance. when I found this site it was like a fucken goldmine. everything, as im sure everybody else felt was like HOLY FUCKING SHIT THATS ME. omigod.

  anyway. now I have these days where I don't work and I just sloth around. I don’t call ppl back. I isolate myself. my family worries there ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Many ppl I have to call. you dont even know. not only, but I am moving soon, so many things I have to do for that. my apartment is disgusting. I feel fat I need to go to the gym, I need to decide what im doing with  my life next year. I let ppl down everyday. I missed a fucking staff meeting at work. as always at my work I am so good, all the customers love me, my sales are the highest, but my organizational skills are  holding me down. I am so ashamed for that. I missed a staff meeting, its a big deal its only a small independently owned store. I am late. I fuck up because I am so disorganized. my apartment is like a shit room how the fuck can I find anything. FUCK! but I am trying. but anyway, today is one of my days off. I have so much stuff to do. I woke up at 2 pm. I got food at the cafe across the street, now i’m sitting here, drinking coffee , chain smoking cigarettes, doing this and playing online games. I got so high last night and kind of drunk at my friends house, then I wasted money I don’t have and took a cab home, but not all the way home, I had to get out at subway to get a sub. they had no cookies, so I had to go to the shoppers drug mart which is the only 24 hour store and I had to get a giant sized chocolate bar and strawberry mentos for 'dessert'.

  I use the overdraft in my bank account EVERTIME I can. they judge me at the bank. I have bad credit already. I have limited myself in some ways in my life that are almost getting irreparable. I fell like I have got the ball rolling for a pattern of life, a ce low-quality of life that I don’t want for myself. I believe in God. I love God, He helps me. I like some preachers and pastors especially.

 anyway, this was the longest thing I have written in like so many months. fuck i’m so sorry this is so long, but  even if ppl don’t read the whole thing, it was so cathartic to get it out there. but I have hope for myself. I have great parts of me that I love. im pretty good looking. esp on the days where i dont look slobby (which are becoming more often), ppl might never know that im about to go into a SHITHOLE, disgusting apartment. but sometimes i keep it SO CLEAN. anyway, right now im in that stupid 'optimistic' state of my mind after I take my adderal, have some coffee and am procrastinating doing stuff because the sun is shining and I still fell like I have all day to do  it. when the sun goes down, I will realize that i’ve wasted another day of my life and feel pangs of my guilt, self-loathing and anxiety of the impending doom that I feel I will have inevitably brought upon myself. iknow im a spoiled brat and that disgusts me. my parents didnt grow up like that-  but they worked so they coud give me things i love- but i take advantage of it.
 
 anyway I love you all already for being here on this website, I already have read so much shit. and now I feel like I can respond and ppl will know who I am if they wanna see who the broad was who responded to their stuff. I need help. I am asking for it.  I still havent told everything, but I gave a nice little (well actually, huge) TV-dinner serving of my situation. ill be more specific later. im gonna do that bookends stuff and all that. I cant wait. hahah. actually I can.

  but still I know its no laughing matter, but I still do, and when I was younger, I often used to laugh. me and my friends, I have three procrastinator friends. we have known each other so long. each different but we understand our avoidance among other things. we used to laugh like, haha so, it 5 pm and I just woke up, oh wow what a good person. hahah. but anyway, what I want to say is that procrastination has limited me from living more of my life and experiencing it. I have slept so many days away, computered so many days away, ate so many nights away etc etc etc. let down so many ppl, hurt my family and friends, hurt children who I look after and developed friendship or mentor-type roles with by not calling them back or staying in touch. I have fucked up my financial situation. education stuff. so many things. so much. just so much.and i wanna change. i am always trying to change. or at least all of the 'shoulds' that go through my mind all day make me think i am always trying to change.

       Ps. I just tried to ‘edit’ this piece of shit to make sure that it was at least understandable and I see now that I have started like evryfucking sentence/paragraph with “anyway,” hahah but that’s just how I do sometimes, I know its crusty but I am happy that I actually wrote some stuff finally, and the ‘anyway’ is just evidence of my above-average writing skills.ha ha. Such elegant transitions between topics..anyway. ughhhhhh.

Hey teddit you there?

Hi, I exactly know where you are and I feel your pain. I am in the same situation as you are. I am male and almost the same age as yours (22). Ok, first the fun part that got into my head as I started reading your story. Ok this female is my age, is a chronic procastinator like me. What if we get married some day and what would the kids be like!! I mean think of the kids, they wont even learn how to walk, they'll keep delaying it till they reach 15 or something. Dude, those kids would be like totally screwed up. There should be some procastination score attached to people, and people with high score should never have kids.

I was too lazy to read after the line where u said u take drugs. Well its not good to take drugs, do something about it. Oh man...... i like totally hate writing this..... urgh.... ok only if u reply will i write this otherwise forget it, not worth the pain....

romance on the PA Web site

Hey, that would be cool - if people hooked up through the PA Web site. :)

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Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.

if you feel like, please

if you feel like, please reply. tell me what you think. i dont know what to do. for starters i dont even know what to do with the rest of this day. help me. i wil try to give good advice to others even though i myslef dont know how to follow it.

First of all, start readingthe posts and articles.

This program works if you do what they suggest here. I've been right where you are, and it seems the first inclination is to participate. The best thing is to "listen" for a while, and ask a question or so. Behavior only changes by doing the correct things, and won't change by mere talking and thinking. My mind was wild when I came here, and it took a while to get it calmed down enough to pay attention. Please give it a shot.

talking a line

hi lark,
thank you so much for replying to my post. I realize now that my post was too much, too fast. I was thinking about ity after I worte it and i realized that it was too - i dont know what the word to use to describe it here, but i guess it was too self- indulgent and too hustler-y.after i wrote it, i read a little more, and i did read the articles, but then i read one thread that really made me think. it just explained what i sub consciously knew was going on. he didnt want people to think he was talking a line, but he realized hed just had an epiphany.I guess i see that i can think about this in that hyper-distracted way and keep saying in my mind - yeah im gonna do this, this is what inm aware of- but all i end up doing is thinking and/or talking about doing things. in my need to feel better or to soothe my anxieties, i latch on to any tyope of plan, or talk. i know that what i read did give me new information and made sense to me, but if i cant mistake "motion for action"- hemmingway (that was in the post i read about the young man). if i am really to take this seriously, i have to approach it with a quiter mind. like how i told that man to do in my post. im not trying to say i know how to do any aof the things i talk about. i wish to do those things. i know that i really need to make a decision and follow through with action before i need to post here to get help.