IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

This has been my mantra for most of the year so far. I’ve been a chronic procrastinator all my life. I’ve no idea where this trait comes from, analyze and analyze as I must, which is another trait. Argh.

I’m never late for events or people. Never. But give me work, give me writing, give me tasks, give me a dinner party to cook for and I will drive myself mad by letting everything pile up to the very last minute and I go into this chronic Type A personality.

Symptoms of Type A Behavior (from Wikipedia)

1. An intrinsic insecurity or insufficient level of self-esteem which is considered to be the root cause of the syndrome. This is believed to be covert and therefore less observable.
2. Time urgency and impatience, which causes irritation and exasperation.
3. Free floating hostility, which can be triggered by even minor incidents.

Someone said to me that in the absence of other stimuli I got my adrenalin hits from this chronic deferment of duties or work. Maybe.

The long and the short of it is that I don’t like myself very much when I run around like the proverbial bull in the china shop snarling at anyone who will listen how much I have to do and how hard done by I am with the workload when the truth is I’ve created the backlog all by myself and I’ve had loads of time to climb on top of it and get it all done with a bloody smile on my face.

So thereby the mantra. I didn’t want to get into training for the Tely 10, a major road race in St. John’s on July 26th until, oh maybe June, when I got back from Europe. What’s wrong with 6 weeks’ training for a 10 miler pray tell? Uh well, maybe my age for one. A little bit of unforgiveness in the old joints there, old lady? No longer in your forties, ha?

And then my friend in Dublin (where I’m staying) says she is doing the Women’s Mini Marathon in Dublin on June 1st - the biggest women’s road race in the world. And I say if not now, when?. Seriously.

So I registered today. And training starts tonight.

I’ll keep y’all posted on The Elder Jock.