We procrastinated.
We procrastinated as much and as quickly as possible, like it was going out of style, like we were getting extra points for style, pushing the limits of the world's expectations for us. How much later could we arrive to work with no one batting an eye? How much later, in that case, could we arrive without getting a formal talking to? Deadlines were not suggestions but merely hurdles to avoid. We did not procrastinate out of laziness. We were thinking constantly of our responsibilities like little dark clouds hovering overhead and we were constantly checking the weather.We could feel in our bones the barometric shift of our shirked responsibilities until they were completed. Could it be that we put them off because we liked that feeling? The precarious tight rope walk of predicted panic waiting for a subtle breeze? It was a breeze that seemed never to come. We were strangers to falling. And so we kept testing the edges, pushing our procrastination harder and farther, as it was continually revealed just how much we could get away with. This baffled us, shamed us, the idea that we could have been getting away with this much more all along, could have been bare minimuming it and freeing up minutes and hours and months to do something more worthwhile. We had this idea that there was something more worthwhile, always out there, always hovering just out of reach of whatever it was we were doing. We could stretch all day but if we wouldn't know it when we saw it we would never find it. We would never find it. We always felt guilty for this, and we felt guilty that we were not doing more about our responsibilities, and that we were not doing more to get out of them.