I would like to lament about llamas. Actually, it’s supposed to be Lammas, I only assumed it was llamas. Who could tell the difference? Lammas happens to be Merriam Webster’s aptly timed word of the day, since today is August 1st, or Lammas Day in some English-speaking countries. But who ever heard of Lammas Day? It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with a certain furry long-necked mammal.
In case you were wondering…Lammas Day is a festival of the wheat harvest or the feast of first fruits. Another one of the celebrations continued on from the pre-industrialized world, where we actually had a hand in the food we ate, and the expression “the fruits of your labor” was a more literal one.
But am I really here to give a history lesson or a lecture on the laziness of…well, me and I would say, our society as a whole? No. It really just serves as a lesson to show how volatile my focus can be. By this, I mean I am distractible. Though, I prefer to say that I am inquisitive. Which is true, but it also is a testament to the fact that something as inconsequential as a word of the day e-mail can redirect me from something else that I “should” be doing. This also snowballs on me at times. Like my education on Lammas today. Of course, I had to find out what it was, but in the process of reading up on it, I also came across a chain of interesting tidbits of knowledge which I also took a quick interlude in.
This leaves me to wonder if I am only capable of achieving/learning something when there is something else that I would prefer to do less. If I’m being brutally honest with myself, I would have to say this is mostly true. However, there is something I read once about procrastination that I try to hold to, since I know being hard on myself is a precipitator to my procrastinating tendencies. In essense, what I read is that a leopard need not change his spots to be more effective, but that he can learn to be more effective by using those spots to his advantage. This is to say that although I could be more effective if I didn’t procrastinate, I can still use my avoidance and redirecting procrastination traits to my advantage as well. For instance, I can produce a blog for a second day in a row. Had I not put off that “something else”, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the blog.
Ok, so I know that I am still slinging excuses your way, but these are internal debates I have with myself all the time. I am always seeking the better me and analyzing how to accomplish that. When I was a child, I would often sleep in and therefore leave for school too late. So, while I was walking to school, I would always imagine how much further ahead I would be if I had left on time, and then I would try and catch up to the “better me.” I think I am still doing that in my life today in some respects. If I could only catch up to that better me. I wonder where I could be.
And, would I still know what Lammas was?
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