Highlights of Life

*sigh*

I hate to waste money.  Not on silly things.  And today, I discovered the cost of procrastination is actually money.  Yes, cold hard dollar bills.  Ahh…. the anguish.

Recently I’ve started up on an online course.  With my habits, although I could have ordered the book last week, I didn’t.  Isn’t that surprising?  Well, today, I finally decided to order it online, and discovered that I would end up paying an extra 10 dollars for having it delivered expediently.  And had I ordered it last week, it would have been free!!  arghhh… I was mentally kicking myself for being so darn lazy about it.

 On the note of self-improvement, I never did finish off the last post.  By the time I wrote on being undisciplined, I was too exhausted to finish off what would turn out to be a rather lengthy post.  Wisdom got the better of me, and I stopped after point one. LOL.

Interestingly enough, I was listening to a sermon online today.  It used to be a church I used to attend, and for some reason, about 30 minutes before I was about to head out the door, decided to turn it on.  The sermon itself was on… would you believe.. self-improvement!  How coincidental is that!!  Anyways, what little 30 minutes I was able to listen to, I did, and found it quite fascinating.  Unfortunately, because I only heard a bit of it, while multi-tasking and getting ready to run out the door, I really can’t post anything insightful on it.

 Instead, here is the link to the extremely interesting talk, and I suggest you give it a whirl. 

http://vcfcaudio.bostonvineyard.org/070114-bostonsermon.mp3

The talk/sermon is titled: Life is a game, and here are the rules

As with everyone, we all have character flaws we’d like to change.  And the more I reflect, the more I realize I have these traits that are really damn (excuse the French) annoying.  And the person it annoys the most, is me!  Now you would think that being so annoyed, that I would actually be motivated enough to change.  But instead, I seem to just become more entrenched in the quagmire of the status quo.  But slowly but surely the desire to change is growing.  And tonight it seems to have come to a head… so much so, that I’m actually blogging about it.

Here is a wonderfully detailed list of what I want to change in myself:

1. Lack of discipline

One of the traits I’ve always noticed that I’ve had is my lack of discipline.  Now for the undisciplined, we have many coping mechanisms.  For instance, we “try” to keep an agenda, and a list.  The only problem is that we don’t follow it and the list becomes misplaced somewhere, never to be seen again.  Thus, there is always a high probability of double booking or even sometimes-triple booking, and inevitably leaving someone rather annoyed at you.

Before the advent of the blackberrys and google calendar reminders, my friends actually knew me well enough to actually serve in the role of my schedule reminder.  (kind of like a mini secretary).  So it wasn’t uncommon for my university friends to always say, “You know we have assignment X, or test Y on day Z, right?” I would then look rather dazedly at them going, “We do?” and wonder how I forgotten such an important deadline or test. ”Yes” my friends would reply, “I knew you would forget, so that’s why I’m telling you now.”  Ah, such were my university days.  I was truly lucky to have such good friends who knew me so well, and cared.

I shouldn’t forget also the many times I’ve also double booked myself.  There were a number of times when I would sit in anguish at my desk over a deadline in an assignment or an essay while I cancelled last minute on someone or an event that I had been looking forward to all week.  Oh the self-annoyance and irritation at my own folly was most acute at those times.  I don’t know who was more disappointed.  The person I would stand up last minute (who often thought I was pulling out of an unwanted event)… or me, as I sat there kicking myself for being undisciplined and procrastinating to the point of missing out on fun events.

I somehow find that my ability to be undisciplined goes hand in hand with my ability to procrastinate.  With both the internet and computer at my fingertips, the ability to become tempted by both grows, oh, so exponentially.  So I have decided from this day forward, I will try to be more disciplined.  More organized, and less of a procrastinator.