The Procrastinator

It was new year's eve. Holding 3 packets of potato chips in one hand and a packet of fruit cake in another, Reyansh sat down on his chair in his room. He put the snacks beside his laptop and stared into the screen. His mind was blank. He didn't know what to write in his essay. The graduate university application deadline was just a day away, and he had to finish this personal statement by tonight. He had deliberately missed the new year's party organized by his faculty to complete his application. 

'Oh well, l can't think of something right now. I'll do this after a few hours'

Thus thinking, Reyansh once again put off writing his essay to pursue more gratifying pleasures - which included scrolling endlessly down his facebook timeline, and crawling over the web consuming a lot of information garbage, which he knew would never would be much of use to his studies as a graduate student. He grabbed the first packet of chips and tore it open. He moved onto watching some random youtube videos as he grabbed a handful of chips and put them into his mouth.

All the while the pressure of the impending deadline stung him at the back of his mind. If he didn't complete his applications by tomorrow, he'd be nowhere after his graduation. He had already given up on his campus placements - having thought that he'd rather get into a university abroad for higher studies. All those thoughts struck him, trying in vain to put his wanderlust mind back on track.


A couple of hours passed. Soon his eyes began to droop. He was feeling sleepy.

'Oh my nice warm bed waits for me!'.

He took out his phone, and set an alarm for exactly 4 hours from now. He told himself, he'd begin his essay once he woke up.

He lied down on bed, and covered himself with a blanket, waiting for the warmth to seep in. It'd take him another hour for him to finally fall asleep. His mind was terrifyingly agile, and skipped around from one random thought to another.

He thought of how his life was completely meaningless till now, and that he needed to do something about his situation. He couldn't continue procrastinating like this. This was a huge problem - if this persisted he won't be able to get anywhere in the future. With his mind full of worry and resentment, sleep eventually kicked in.

At 5 am, the phone started vibrating while singing a horrible tribal song. He needed a very loud and cacophonous alarm to wake him up as he was a very deep sleeper. He lazily opened his eyes, got up to grab his phone, disabled the alarm and set another one for 7 am. He snuggled into his covers and drifted to sleep again.

After another 4 times of resetting the alarm, he finally woke up at 12 noon. It was a horrible feeling. Just around 12 hours to go for the deadline! He cursed himself for being such a lazy brat. 

But he didn't yet panic. He still had 12 hours. In that time, he could easily prepare a rough essay, modify his resume etc. to complete his application requirements. Thus rationalizing, he once again decided to check his facebook. He soon drifted into a spree of net surfing.

He checked the time. It was 3 pm. I think it's time I started! Thus saying, he opened a document file, where he had typed in only the title and the author name. He started pondering on what to write in his essay. He was finding it difficult to organize his thoughts, and all the while was thinking of the new episode of "Five Nations" that was to be released that day.

It might have released by now! Thus saying, he navigated to the site where he watched the new episodes. The countdown timer indicated that there were 2 mins to the release. He stared at the timer for a few seconds, switched to checking his facebook timeline and then came back to watch the new episode.