The Professional Crastinator

My sister and I came up with a term for someone that goes far beyond the normal amount of procrastinating: The Professional Crastinator. This is the story of one of those people.

Inside my head is a dried up old man that questions everything I do. I call him The Professional Crastinator. He won’t let me sit down to write until I have the proper tools and the right idea.

I’ve wanted to write a novel for a long time and I’ve come up with ideas for lots of them. I’ve even started a bunch, but I haven’t been able to finish one.

I thought writing a dirty book would hold my attention but The Professional Crastinator reminded me that I get a headache from eye strain if I sit too long in front of a screen, which is what’s required of the modern novelist.

So I bought an old laptop because you can turn the backlight almost all the way off. The laptop couldn’t do much but surf the web and run a word processor so it wasn’t a distraction, but there was a hint of backlight so it wasn’t the perfect solution.

I found something called the Alphasmart Neo. It has a clicky laptop style mechanical keyboard, a small four line green LCD screen with no backlight and runs on three triple A batteries. It’s very portable and the batteries last forever but you need a well lit room or a lamp to read the screen.

The Professional Crastinator had me scouring the internet for low eye strain writing solutions. Before I knew it I was watching videos of e-ink tablets attached to bluetooth keyboards thinking I’d found the perfect solution.

I could afford to buy the device but part of me was screaming for simplicity: for an uncluttered desktop.

I already have a computer on my desk. I built it for playing video games. When I wanted to write I pushed the 21 inch monitor to the back of my desk along with the keyboard and sat my laptop in front of it. When I bought the Alphasmart Neo to write with, again, I pushed the monitor and keyboard to the back of my desk and put it up front.

I thought, “If I buy that e-ink tablet and bluetooth keyboard I’m going to end up doing the same thing and I’ll have an extra device that I don’t need!”

I use an online word processor called 'Google Docs’ to write with and I decided to fiddle with the settings. I figured out how to make the background black and the text brown and how to turn on the night light settings through Windows 10. Now I have a 21 inch screen to write with that gives me very little eye strain. I can write for hours without getting a headache.

But The Professional Crastinator wouldn’t leave me alone until I got myself a new keyboard. The keyboard I used with my gaming computer was just a clunky old cheapy that you could find on any computer. The Professional Crastinator said I needed something better, so I found the clicky keyboard. The keys make a distinctive ‘click’ when you type.

The Professional Crastinator made me want that keyboard because I had closed off all his other avenues of distraction. He was getting desperate. When I put my foot down and decided I was going to use my gaming computer to write for the sake of  simplicity he wouldn’t shut up about that damn clicky keyboard.

I allowed The Professional Crastinator one last extravagance before I got down to some serious writing: the clicky keyboard. I’m using it right now. Zack tells me he can hear the clicking all over the house. It sounds a little like an old typewriter. It’s very satisfying.

I woke up at four o-clock in the morning thinking about the structure of my dirty book. I got out of bed, went to the toilet and back to bed. When I couldn’t get to sleep I got up and browsed the internet looking for different ways of writing books. Around seven I got back into bed and thankfully went to sleep.

I woke up again when I heard Zack, who’s nineteen, coming down the stairs. I asked him what time it was.

“It’s about nine thirty,” he said.

I told him I woke up at four in the morning and wasn’t able to get back to sleep because I was thinking about the dirty book. I told him I was thinking of a complete overhaul.

He said, “Meow.” We talk like cats to each other.

I sat down in front of my gaming computer with its clicky keyboard and looked for the new first chapter of my book. I got rid of old outlines. I found five of them and deleted them all.

I found a handful of chapters named Chapter One. I reread them, then renamed them something else. I thought I might have had a Chapter One already written but I would have to decide that after I reorganized my documents.

I worked on it for five hours. I even started a completely new outline; one that fit with my newly created structure.

Zack poked his head in my room around two thirty. I told him what I was doing with the book. I was proud of the work I had done.

“You should write funny stories,” he said, “like David Sedaris.”

He didn’t praise my dedication to the process. He didn’t tell me he thought restructuring the novel was a good idea. He’ll never read my book: I would never let him, so he doesn’t care about it.

After spending five butt numbing hours in front of my gaming computer with it’s new clicky keyboard I began to see that writing a dirty book was The Professional Crastinator’s way of keeping me from writing what I was meant to write: my stories. I didn’t recognize the dried up old bastard because he wasn’t telling me to buy something new.

Zack’s advice made me think about my stories. It popped into my head to tell him about my friend Adam’s wedding. Adam was my helper for several years when I was the Missouri Specials driver for Deffenbaugh.

The Specials driver was given a handful of tickets everyday: specials, that I had to make a route out of. Then I drove a little trash truck to each location and bid on what was at the curb. If the bid was accepted by the customer we picked it up.

There was a lot of time to chat between stops so Adam and I got to know each other very well. We became friends.

During our time together I told Adam lots of stories. One of them was about the day my son Zack was born.

When I met my second wife she had three kids. She used something called the Bradley method to give birth.

Put simply, the Bradley method is the opposite of Lamaze. Lamaze tries to distract you from what your body is doing and Bradley has you listen to your body. There was a lot of deep breathing and no drugs. She gave birth completely naturally. She used the Bradley method when we got pregnant, as well.

The birthing plan we gave the staff told them not to update her on dilation. They could come in and check her all they wanted but they were not to tell her how much she was dilated. She told them her body would tell her when it was time to push.

The birthing plan said, “When I tell you I’m going to push I will start pushing.”

She lay on her side and I rubbed her back. We chatted a little but most of the time she lay there with her eyes closed, concentrating. She seemed to be meditating.

After several hours she opened her eyes and said, calmly, “Tell the doctor I’m going to start pushing.”

I went to the door and shouted at the nurses station, “she said she’s going to push!”

Her doctor stood at the nurse’s station looking at a chart. She glanced up lazily and said, “Okay, tell her to hold on . . . I’ll be there in a minute.”

“She said she’s gonna push,” I said, “and she means it.”

The doctor sauntered over to our room. She pulled up a chair and casually tugged on a pair of rubber gloves. She put her fingers inside my wife, who, by that time, was shivering, growling and breathing hard.

The doctor shouted, “I can feel the head!” She stepped to the door and shouted to the nurses station, “I can feel the head! Let’s go, people!”

Everyone at the nurses station froze like a deer in headlights.

Then they all put on red rubber noses, big floppy shoes and started bumping into each other.

They tumbled and cartwheeled into our room, unlocked the wheels on the bed and tried to push it out the door with my wife panting and groaning, but the bed was too wide: it wouldn’t go through the doorway. I looked at the door and saw that you could unlock the frame and open it. So I did.

They pushed her bed down the hall bouncing off one wall then the other.


The groom at a wedding doesn’t have much to do, but I helped Adam with whatever he needed. I downloaded music for the reception and generally kept an eye on his needs. His biggest need was calm. He needed lots of it.

From time to time I would ask him, “How ya doin’?” He would answer that he was fine, just nervous. Time passed and the wedding was about to start. As the ceremony got underway I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “How ya doin’?”

He whispered back, “Isn’t this where everyone puts on red rubber noses, big floppy shoes and starts bumping into each other?”

Adam quoted my story back to me at such a momentous time in his life. I glow when I think about it.

Zack was right. I should just tell my stories. It made me realize that The Professional Crastinator’s biggest victory was convincing me to write this big complicated dirty book that my kids would never get to read, instead of just telling my stories.

So that’s what I’m going to do.