Author's note: This was inspired by a comment made by Chrisdoof under one of my stories. Looking back, the story doesn't entirely fit his description, but I hope this is at least a little similar to the deep contemporary concept he described.
I'm submitting the assignment ten minutes before the deadline, but I can't say that's a surprise since I only started four hours ago. I had a whole week to do this, but I can only pray the level of work I put in will be alright. It feels like I always put things off until the last minute.
Oh, I've tried to stop, believe me. I've changed my environment, planned out my day, even planned out my year. Medication? I've taken three kinds, and none of them ever worked. I had an epiphany one day when my dad was yelling at me to stop making excuses. "No matter what I change, I always end up doing everything at the last minute." So I moved out and started lying to my parents that I wasn't procrastinating anymore. To be honest, it's barely working. I can manage my Master's degree and a job at the same time, but that still means I have a bunch of close calls and adrenaline-filled nights.
Just thinking about my situation stresses me out. "Even with all the lies, life is pretty good at this point," I remind myself in an attempt to calm down. "I wash my clothes every week and check my mail every two weeks, and that's diligent enough."
I should check my mail. The mailbox is overflowing, but that's normal. I get mail from a bunch of people who used to live in this apartment. "I really should send these letters to them..."
Once I'm back in my house, I stuff the other people's mail into an overflowing drawer (I'll send all that mail out eventually). I'm left with only three letters. The first is about my electrical bill, which I forgot to pay, but I think it doesn't matter since I set up automatic payments. Am I wrong? "I should look through the other letters before I check this one."
The second letter is from my bank, warning me about paying off my credit card on time. I make enough money to pay, but I keep forgetting. "Should I check if I can set up auto-pay from my checking account to my credit card? Then again, maybe I shouldn't do that at all, in case there are any fraudulent transactions."
I groan. After reading two letters, I already have three important things to do - and instead of doing any of them, I'm reading the final letter. The envelope is a folded sheet of lined paper held together by tape and staples. Thick and square, it looks like an arts and crafts project I made for fun when I was ten. The return address on the envelope is just "Attention Co." without even a street name. I open the envelope and unfold the letter, which is also on a lined sheet of paper. I can tell an adult wrote it from the cramped, impeccable handwriting.
Do you have problems with procrastination? Tried everything, and it hasn't helped? Follow this odd ritual, and you'll end up completely changed! You'll be capable of focusing on the most important things, no matter what life throws at you!
First, you have to call the number (3#3) 054-26#4. The pound signs are not optional. If you're not meant to access this letter, this number will lead to a message like "Your call cannot be completed as dialed." However, if you are supposed to receive this letter, then calling this number will mean you have to finish the ritual three weeks after your first call.
My interest is piqued, so I dial the number and wait as the ringtone plays.
"Hello?" The man on the phone sounds cartoonishly cheerful.
"Hi, I'm calling about the, uh, procrastination letter. Is it, you know... real?"
"You're darn tooting it's real! A real opportunity to help you! I'm so glad you called! I'm coming over right now!"
"Wait, you are?" As soon as the words leave my mouth, I hear a knock at the door. When I open it, a short portly man in a bowler hat grabs my hand and shakes it.
"It's a pleasure to meet you in person!" He releases my hand and takes off his hat. "So, I bet you're wondering about the fee at this point."
"... Fee?"
"Kiddo, did you just call immediately after reading the phone number?"
"... Yeah. That was a bad idea, huh?"
"It all depends on you, buckaroo. You've made a humongous decision, which you would've known if you'd read the letter. Once you call the number, you're obligated to pay the fee if you back out."
"Oh, okay." I can't help but feel like I've made a terrible decision.
"This is a top-dollar decision you've made, actually! You didn't hesitate for a second! That's good, good! Hesitation is your main problem, I bet, 'cause it leads to your procrastinating! That said, I figure you should actually read the letter, right, kiddo?"
Literally the next paragraph is:
But remember... DO NOT CALL THE NUMBER until you're 100% sure of this! Read the entire letter before making the decision!
I sigh and keep reading.
Once you've called the number, you have only one job. You need to mail a letter back to the sender (Attention Co.). The letter needs to contain every grievance you have with your current situation - every opportunity you've missed, every dream you've given up, every part of you that needs to be expunged. Anything you don't mention won't be considered a problem, so it won't be changed afterwards.
The letter also needs to have at least an entire day's work put into it, meaning twenty-four hours of work. You have three weeks, so if you work on the letter for an hour and ten minutes every day, you'll end up satisfying this condition easily.
Keep in mind that you can't get someone else to write the letter for you. Trust us - we'll know. We'll also know how long you spent on it, and don't kid yourself - no matter how much you write in eight hours, that's not twenty-four.
If you succeed, you'll find yourself able and willing to:
- figure out the most important thing in a given situation
- make plans to get these things done in a timely manner
- make the best use of your ample free time to de-stress
All this, and you won't have to pay anything at all! The work you put into your response will be enough for a lifetime of ease!
If you fail to do this, you have to pay a fee which depends on the agent.
Good luck! Please direct any questions to the agent who takes your call. If the agent is not physically present, call this phone number to reach them.
Attention Co.
I look up at the beaming man. "Can you tell me about the fee I have to pay?"
His grin just gets larger. "Well, you seem like such a hardworking young fella that I definitely won't take anything you've worked for, and I won't do anything to you that wouldn't have happened anyways."
This is starting to feel like some kind of scam, because it just seems too good to be true. Admittedly, working on the letter for twenty-four total hours sounds harrowing, but it's still doable. And at the end, I get a free, 100%-effective cure to my procrastination? "The thing is, well, this just seems too easy for the payoff to actually - "
"Oh, naturally. It's not supposed to seem difficult."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, kiddo, if it's so easy to win, then do it. I double-dog dare you!"
Why is he so sure that I'll fail? The longer he stays here, the more his perpetual smile and patronizing pet names make me feel like he knows I'm going to fail. I want him out of the apartment, but before I can open my mouth, he bows deeply and backs out through the door.
"Good luck, kiddo. I'm coming back in three weeks." He puts his hat back on and slams the door shut.
ELIMINATE PROCRASTINATION - Motivational Speech-2
I decide to start immediately, bringing out a lined sheet of paper and a pencil. But when I think about the opportunities I missed, I come up blank. Sure, every day seems stressful, but I don't think procrastinating has really caused me to miss any opportunities. With nothing else to do, I decide to write about how stressed I am every day. That should work, right?
I write a single sentence - Every day, I'm so stressed because of how much I procrastinate. - before I give up, unable to think of any way to elaborate on that. I decide to watch a YouTube video about procrastination called "ELIMINATE PROCRASTINATION - Motivational Speech" to get into the headspace of someone who loves to complain about procrastination, but I can barely watch beyond the half-minute mark because I start thinking about the schoolwork I could be doing and job opportunities I could be looking for instead of writing this letter.
"The video is right. I shouldn't put important stuff off until tomorrow." So I start looking for job opportunities, reasoning that I can always work on the letter some other time.
I end up doing other things over the next seven days. Some of it is good, like trying to hunt for a new job, working on important homework and projects (including improving my awful draft for my Master's degree), and cooking and cleaning so I stay alive and healthy. Sadly, most of my time is just spent looking at my phone and enjoying myself. Needless to say, I completely forget about the letter until the next time I happen to sit down at my desk at 7:00 PM, two weeks before the deadline.
Once I see it, all the guilt comes rushing back. I set a timer to know how long I've spent on it and start writing. For exactly two hours, I write about all the things I could have done: getting more internships, getting better grades, talking to more people, becoming better at the job I want to do. I frantically write down everything I've been trying to forget about since even before I gave up on efficiency. But letting all these grievances out takes a toll. I start crying and my tears and snot drip onto the paper. I try to ignore it, but eventually I stop the timer, get up and get a tissue.
That marks the end of my productivity. Once I return and try to continue, all I can see are the problems with what I wrote. "Are they really going to accept a letter covered in snot? If I copy all of this down to another piece of paper, will that count as additional work? No, that can't be right. Otherwise, I could just keep copying the same paragraph over and over to different pages and get to twenty-four hours." But once I think of that, I realize that there must be some level of quality control. Otherwise, people could just send in a letter consisting of the same paragraph written over and over again. "Is that a bad thing? Is that considered okay? It has to be considered a bad thing." Also, the sentences in the letter seem pretty disjointed. Even though it's not the same as copying the letter, it's plausible that rewriting the letter with better grammar is what I'm supposed to do - part of working on the letter. But it's also plausible that it would be considered rewriting part of the paragraph. "How am I supposed to write the letter? Are good grammar and structure something they want, or are originality and spur-of-the-moment thinking better?" I look warily at my phone, completely afraid to talk to the agent. Is he even going to help me? He seems so sure I'm going to fail. I get up and walk around, feeling like I'm about to throw up.
After a lot of hand-wringing and groaning, I end up calling (3#3) 054-26#4 again. By the second ring, I hear his voice on the phone. "Hey there!" He doesn't sound unhinged over the phone, and it's almost like I'm calling my parents. "I'm so glad you actually called! It sure is a difficult thing to get started sometimes! Do you want to tell me what you need?"
I can't remember my questions anymore. "Can you wait just a minute? I'm, uh..."
"No problemo! I can wait on the phone for as long as you like! The first step can be hard, since you realize everything you missed before, so it's important to ask questions no matter how long it takes!" He sounds way less condescending, which gives me the hope I need to actually remember what I was trying to say.
"I don't know how the quality control works for this letter. Can I just change the grammar and repeat myself?"
"Well, good question! You can write whatever you want in the letter. You can cover it with snot and tears if you end up crying, you can cover it with food if you're hungry, and we won't mind! Also, you can write the same paragraph over and over again, and that still counts as working on the letter. If you decide to write 'All play and no work makes me a dull boy' nine thousand times, that's perfectly fine! You can even send previous letters alongside the final letter to add to your total! We're not going to turn away any hard work!"
"Thank you! Thank you so much!"
"No problem! Is that your only question?"
"Wait!" I say on a whim. It feels like something is missing, and after thirty seconds of awkward silence, it comes to me. "You never directly told me what you want as payment. I want to know what it is, because otherwise... because I..." I stop talking, not quite sure why I want to know.
"Oh, sorry! I should have clarified, so I'll say it as clearly as possible this time: luck, kid. That's what I want."
What? "How are you going to get luck? I don't think I'm that lucky - "
"Wow, look at the time, kiddo! I don't think you have time to whine! You're a real champ, and we both know that, so why don't you just test the luck that you don't have and actually write this thing?" I can hear him smiling more and more over the phone, and it finally occurs to me that he might do it as a threat display.
"Yes, I'll do it. I'm sorry for not thinking that - "
"Buckaroo, you don't even know how sorry you should be." He hangs up on that note, and I decide to start writing. Even though it could have been a joke, I start writing "All play and no work makes me a dull boy" as I mull over our conversation. I'd never thought of myself as being lucky, but there are a lot of ways that things could go wrong in my life. I could end up getting scammed, or extremely sick, or... no, I can't really think of anything else. I don't know what he's on about.
I write well into the night somehow, alternating between actual grievances and "All play and no work" until it's 5:00 AM and I've been writing for ten hours.
Now that I've turned like this, I see the drawer of other people's mail too. I realize I've never actually sent mail to an address, so it would make sense to practice using that mail I've never sent. I start looking at how to send letters, which turns into watching YouTube videos, and eventually I remember I have to work on other assignments for my Master's degree.
I look at the letter, and I can't help but think that two weeks is a long time. If I manage to keep up this level of work on two other days, I can easily finish the letter. Now I can go to sleep and deal with this some other day.
I'm staring at the letter again. I have five days to finish it, I haven't worked on it since 5:00 AM that day, and I have more deadlines than just this one coming up. Thankfully, I have some spare time to make a schedule.
As I set up a schedule for the next five days, I'm surprised by how empty my average day really is. Most of it is just watching YouTube videos, and if I just spend less time watching them and more time actually working on things, I can probably end up finishing this letter easily while still finishing everything I need to do for class.
I spend four straight hours working on the letter, bringing my total up to 14 hours. I flop into bed and smile, knowing that if I keep to my schedule, I'll have spent 34 hours on the letter by the deadline. All I have to do is stick to the schedule for five days.
Of course I didn't stick to the schedule.
It's the day before the deadline, and I've spent the other three not getting anything important done. Throwing caution to the wind, I ignore literally everything else to focus on my letter. I start at noon, and for hours on end, I feverishly write about how sorry I am for not working on the letter, how desperate I am to have a solution. I eat instant noodles for lunch and dinner, and I spend some time in the bathroom where I can't really focus on the letter, but my hard work pays off overall. By 11:00 PM, there are maybe fifty pages of incomprehensible scribbling in the letter, and when I add up the time from all the timers, it comes to twenty-four hours and thirty minutes.
The best part is that I still have time before midnight to work on something important. So of course, I spend that time watching videos on my phone. Why should I do even more today when I've got tomorrow as well? Then I get a phone call from (3#3) 054-26#4.
"Hi." I can hear him smiling through the phone. "I noticed you didn't mail the letter."
In all the commotion, I forgot that I actually had to mail the letter. Thank god I still have another day. "I'll do it tomorrow."
"No, you don't get it. The deadline's passed, kid."
"But... no, no - "
"Okay, I lied a little just now. You thought you had until tonight, maybe 11:59 PM today, but you actually had until 12:30 AM today. It's already been three weeks since I last saw you."
I can't speak, and I feel like I can't breathe.
"Also, you left the timer running two weeks ago when you called me, and you spent more than thirty minutes trying, so you didn't even write for twenty-four hours anyways."
I draw in a single shuddering breath.
"Good night. I'm coming to pick up my payment at 11:30 PM." He hangs up, and I start to cry.
But then I stop. I don't need to worry about him, do I? All he's going to take is my luck, and I'll be just fine without that. After all, I've dealt with a series of unfortunate events right now. If I'm constantly dealing with them, I'll just adapt.
Even though it's hard not to feel uneasy, I manage to fall asleep.
The whole ritual turned out to be a bust, which means it went from an understandable time investment to procrastinating on editing my draft. "This is why I can't plan properly - it's not obvious what turns out to actually be worthwhile." Because of how down I am, I can't bring myself to start editing my assignment until 7:00 PM. My fingers fly over the keyboard as the hours pass by, but it all comes to a rude halt when there's a knock on the door, and even though I don't move to unlock it, I hear it swing open. I turn around slowly and lock eyes with my agent, his chin right above my shoulder. He whispers, "The game wasn't rigged. If anything, it was rigged in your favor." For the first time, I see his smile reaching up to his eyes - he's genuinely happy with this outcome, and it makes me angry.
I muster up all the confidence I have and declare, "I realized something. I'm not all that lucky, and if I really need luck that badly, this is just a chance to prove to myself that I can - "
The man bursts into laughter. When he finally stops laughing, I try to continue my sentence, but he shoves his entire hand into my mouth.
"Kiddo, I know when you're lying. You can't really pretend this is what you wanted to happen... but let's see you try!" He pulls his hand out of my mouth and pats me on the head with it. I fall to my knees, spitting and dry heaving, but I can't get the bitter, chalky taste out of my mouth. When I stare up at him, he gently smiles and continues his spiel.
"Don't worry too much about the fee, sport. You've accomplished a whole lot, and I don't want to take anything you don't deserve. But your luck - kid, it's something else. That's how you stay alive, that's how you've accomplished everything. On the rare occasions where the world doesn't bend in your favor, you bend your will so it does, completely ignoring that it should be the norm, not the exception, for you to suffer. You should be out on the street, homeless, with your work ethic. You can't even keep to a schedule, right? Do you think you work hard, and that's why you can eschew a schedule? Luck is your reality distortion field, your just-in-time accomplishments, your little helper when everything comes crashing down time and time again. That's something money can't buy, and it's something you don't deserve. It's something I deserve."
I open my mouth to object, but he shoves his hand in there again. This time, he shoves his arm deeper and deeper down my throat, pushing my head until I'm looking straight upwards. I gag and desperately try to punch him, slap him, do something to get him to stop. But nothing works, and when he finally pulls his hand out, it feels like he's yanked something out of my heart too.
"Pleasure doing business with you." He slowly walks out, locking the door behind him as I weep on the floor.
I stare into space, wondering how to react. Should I scream, or cry, or...
After two minutes, I realize I'm just procrastinating, and I can't help but laugh. "I guess I was right all along, huh? No matter what help people give me, I can never improve, so living like this is fine."
Maybe one day I can convince myself. For now, it's time to actually do the work I was assigned. With my eyes on the clock, I hit send thirty minutes after the deadline. I may have only edited it for four hours, but at least I managed to get it in. I hope I don't get docked points.
I've been fired from my job, I'm failing my classes, my electrical bill needs to be paid, my credit card doesn't work, and my parents won't talk to me anymore. I get off the phone with the moving company and scream into my pillow. I missed the deadline for the third time, and they're not going to move my furniture out or... something. "How did I even stay alive before this? I don't know how anything works at all!"
I should've realized how lucky I really was. Everything just worked out for me back then, and I kept ignoring the voice in the back of my head that told me it'd all come crashing down. Now that voice is right and it's all my fault.
I try to counter the negativity with a lot of positive affirmations. "There's nothing wrong with this! My parents will forgive me! It's not like trying harder would have magically changed the outcome! There's always tomorrow! I have a whole life left to improve on this! I can get better! I can get better!"
Nothing helps.
Written by Squidmanescape
Content is available under CC BY-SA