The Passage of Time

I have been meaning to write this for some time now, but the major problem of humanity has been afflicting me. I mean ‘procrastination’ or am I the only one afflicted by the disease of procrastinitis?

The whole world might not want to agree with me on this, as we all want to feel and live up to our image of being serious minded, achievers, purpose driven, focused, and all that but save me the balderdash. We know that there are a million and one things that we have been meaning to do that we do not eventually get to do.

Sometimes it seems to be no fault of ours as the demands of one’s job, moving around in Lagos, being available for friends and family and ‘the tyranny of the urgent’ are all enough to take up the whole 24 hours of a day three times over, but do we ever pause! and realize that time is moving on so slowly, the clock goes tick, tock, tick tock and it’s a brand new day. All the plans and ‘to-do lists’ left unfinished, once again.

It sometimes just dawns on me that time moves on, or as a certain Minister Lagbaja would say ‘Aye n yi lo, ko ma duro.’

It’s the start of another month, and time that I ought to sit back and take stock of the first four months of this year. At the start of 2009, for many people – the SonofPhilip inclusive – have set goals and targets of things to achieve by the end of the year. If it’s the same for the other 5,999,999,999 people on this terrestrial ball as it is for me, we would have moved these goals to one nice corner of our mind while we struggle to make it from day to day only to wake up towards the end of the year and realize that the whole year is almost gone without getting to do half of what we set out to do at the start of the year.

So sometime today – or tomorrow, “see me procrastinating again” – I would sit down and examine where exactly I am in my goals and plans. It’s time to measure progress, earned value, and use all other performance indices to check and see if going at the rate, I would achieve that that I set out to achieve this year, or I’ll be needing to do a lot of fast-tracking to be able achieve the goals within the time remaining.

Eventually I want to be able to say like Paul,

‘… …but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal … …’

So that come December 31, 2009 I can say, again like Paul,

‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown … … which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day (31/12/2009)… …’

Wow, I have digressed so much and did not get to write the April fool article I have wanted to write since April 1, 2009 (that will be some other time) but at least I have confessed to ‘thorn in my flesh,’ and so let the healing begin.

Catch you, some other time, and not so fast, this is a poem from growing up years, ciao!

‘Tick say the clock, Tick, tick,

What you have to do, do quick.’