I was going to call this article “The cure for procrastination”, but I’m not exactly sure that it’s procrastination I’m addressing.

I’m not talking about things I’m avoiding doing, per say.  I’m talking about the things I’m just forgetting to do.  You know the ones.

The email that needs a response at some point but not right now and so you leave it marked as read in your inbox to answer when you’re finished with all the crucial projects of the day.  The one that you find, marked read in your inbox, three months later.

The box of clothes sitting by your bedroom door that you’re going to go through and take to the dry cleaner or the tailor or the local thrift shop after work someday, or maybe this weekend.  The one that you’ve been tripping over every morning for so long that your husband thinks it’s part of your decorating style.

The mail you’re going to sort, the desk you’re going to clean, the friend you’re going to call back, the dress you’re going to return and the eye doctor appointment you’re going to make.

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Last year was, to put it bluntly, spectacularly awful for me.  While 2010 hasn’t been perfect,  I’ve found myself in a good place more often than not.  Thousands of dollars in counseling and therapy can do that for a person, I guess.

As a lifestyle blogger, I chronicled a good portion of the suckage that was 2009 and I was very fortunate to receive a ton of support from the Internet.  However, as life has improved over the past several months, I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern: I have less to say and less desire to say it when I’m happy.

Bad news, it seems, is easier to share than good news.

A mental scan of conversations with other people reveals that this is a common phenomenon that goes beyond blogging.  My phone conversations with my mother are much longer if I’ve had a bad day.  My chats with co-workers are brief when they’re upbeat. When I worked in a corporate office environment, work could not begin until everyone shared at least one complaint.  It was very rare for someone to come to a morning meeting with a smile on their face and cheerful reports.  And the one guy that did?  Was annoying.  To everyone.

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Over the last few months, I have created two new habits and broken one old one.  I changed the way I eat, started exercising 6 days a week, and quit smoking.  As you can imagine, it’s been a busy 3 months filled with mental and emotional gymnastics.

It’s also been extremely rewarding.  Aside from the obvious physical effects of not smoking and getting my body into better shape, it’s been empowering to realize that I can look at my life and say, “I want it this way” and then make it so.  I find that I’m less overwhelmed by things I can’t get done and less easily discouraged by things that aren’t going my way.  The difference, I believe, is that I now know that I can make whatever changes are necessary whenever I decided to set my mind to it.  I’m not controlled by my circumstances or - most importantly - my habits.

Dictionary.com defines a habit as “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary”.  There is a lot of power in being able to pick and choose which habits you’ll have in your life, especially because of that “almost involuntary” part.  But how do you change something that you’re not really thinking about?

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We all say it.  Most of us even believe it when we say it.  But every single one of us is flat out wrong.

The reality is, you’ll never get around to that when you have more time.

Not when work slows down.  Not when school is out.  Not even when the kids move out or you retire from your full time job.

You will never, ever have more time than you do right now.

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