Modern conveniences will be the death of me!

This is not a new thought to me, but I pondered it once again as I did dishes this morning. I have always been a procrastinator, but modern conveniences have made my bad habit an atrocious one! For instance, I have a dishwasher that is available to wash dishes 24/7; but since it’s there, I’ll often stack dishes in the sink with the thought, “I’ll load it later…it won’t take that long.” So instead of it ‘not taking that long’ right then, I abandon the sitting dishes to waste time some other way. They sit there WAY too long (and it all depends on how well you know me as to how long you think that is!) and when I finally decide to do them, I mentally chastise myself the entire time for not taking the time to load them when I dirtied them.

Another example: paying bills. There is nothing I love more than to know that my finances are in order and up-to-date, but there’s nothing I hate more than sitting down and paying bills. And now, thanks to the wonder of online bill paying, my bad habit has degenerated into something worse…because I’ll put it off until the last possible moment. So sometimes I’ll wake up from sound sleep at 11:50pm the night of the day something is due and run to my computer frantically trying to complete my payment transaction so as to miss the dreaded late fee—and then sometimes I just forget. I never want to figure out how much money I’m wasting in late fees because the amount would sicken me, I’m sure! And computers in general--and me owning one in particular--don’t get me started! Now, one modern convenience that I absolutely love is automatic bill paying! There are blessings amidst the pain! :)

And a third: communication. I used to be an avid letter-writer. I loved keeping up with my far-removed friends and I had a few friends that I would exchange correspondence with two or three times a week. Now that convenient ole’ email has become a standard, I am horrible about communicating with close friends, much less physically distant ones! And as with my bill-paying issues, the same goes for email. If someone needs some information by a certain date, you can be sure that I’m not going to actually send it until that date.

I think I am much more ‘on the ball’ when I don’t have these conveniences. I don’t wait until the last minute to mail things because the ole’ US MAIL isn’t always the promptest of deliverers. When I don’t have a dishwasher, I’m much better about not letting things stack up because I know I’m gonna have to take it all out of the sink and wash it eventually. I don’t really have an excuse for the communication because it’s not like I can’t start writing letters again. I’m just so out-of-habit that it would require discipline and dedication to start again, and hasn’t this whole post been about my lack of discipline and dedication brought on by these conveniences in the first place?! ;)