On Winter Procrastination

            Winter seems to freeze more than the air, especially during holidays from work; the cold slows our actions and thoughts, making us sluggish—like bears without the sense to hibernate.  We allow ourselves to become prisoners of the cold, locked in our homes, seized by depression, and procrastinating all but the most essential tasks.  We seek escape and pleasure in books or games or whatever else suits our fancy, just killing time with the never-ending thoughts, “I’ll be happier when . . .” and “I’ll get to it when . . .” and when “When” comes, we sheepishly push the deadline to some point further in the future.

Which comes first: depression or procrastination?  It’s a chicken-and-the-egg question since the negative consequences of procrastination can depress a person, and depression can cause a person to procrastinate.  In this cycle, the best motivation out of both procrastination and depression is a mixture of hope and aversion: hope in eternity, certainly, but in the short term, hope that one’s troubles will improve by taking action—hope that by taking those single bites of the metaphorical elephant before us, we will gradually consume it, preferably before it spoils and gives us a tummy ache.  Next, aversion is not necessarily an emotion like fear or hate, but a common-sense avoidance to such things as food poisoning and to the pervasive smell of spoilt meat, and this aversion may further fuel our hope of eating the elephant in time to avoid these consequences and may motivate us out of our procrastination.  In turn, cultivating and allowing oneself to feel hope—and the simple satisfaction of acting can also help relieve depression.

Here I sit as a prime example, faced with a mess of colored papers, stickers, glue sticks, scissors, and calligraphy supplies over my living room floor and kitchen table.  I have only the aversion of the mess and of waste—and the hope of a clean house and useful, pretty cards—to keep me from chucking the lot in the bin and, instead, to motivate me to finish the partially-made cards so I may eventually tuck the materials back in their places out of sight.  The living room mess is already decidedly smaller, and I nibble at the rest whenever I can drag myself from the refuge of the books I received at Christmas.  In the same way, the hope of spending my vacation time usefully and the aversion of letting a month go by without at least two blog posts has prompted this contemplation.  The satisfaction of defeating these small battles with procrastination go a long way toward mending my winter blues.  
However, happiness in “I’ll be happy when” is too unreliable; when spring comes or the project ends, we need a new hope to fuel us lest we fall into a funk.  Ideally, our emotional state would be separate from our actions (or lack thereof) and we could be content in all circumstances (which would remove one cause of procrastination), but few people find this easy to accomplish—on their own.  As Immanuel Kant wrote, happiness requires “something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”  Naturally, the first and best place to find all three is Christ.  His Spirit will help us win the daily—minutely—struggles against our human nature and keep our hope and zeal.  Success will come easier with practice in relying on Him, but as one might tell from the paragraphs above, I’m not there yet.  Well, I suppose I’d better praise God for giving me these (unwanted!) opportunities to practice diligence and contentment this winter.  :)