Procrastination

I find that I have procrastinated long enough, and now I am scrambling to get my blog entries finished.  I am actually finding that I have procrastinated in most of my classes.  This is a very unfortunate flaw that I seem to have acquired over my many years in school.  So while walking home today, I started thinking if maybe there is a Greek god of procrastination?  Unfortunately, I could not find one.  Yet still, if myth is the precedent behind every action, something mythological must have made me choose these actions.  History will always repeat itself, so I looked back to history, no, I looked into mythology.  My findings were that procrastination has been long in the making.
We all know the story of Hercules, and if you are one of the few who don't, well then you might want to read this...

As they survive, the labours of Hercules are not told in any single place, but must be reassembled from many sources. Ruck and Staples^[1] assert that there is no one way to interpret the labours, but that six were located in the Peloponnese, culminating with the rededication of Olympia. Six others took the hero farther afield. In each case, the pattern was the same: Hercules was sent to kill or subdue, or to fetch back for Hera's representative Eurystheus a magical animal or plant. "The sites selected were all previously strongholds of Hera or the 'Goddess' and were Entrances to the Netherworld".^[1]

A famous depiction of the labours in Greek sculpture is found on the metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which date to the 450s BC.

In his labours, Hercules was sometimes accompanied by a male companion (an eromenos), according to Licymnius and others, such as Iolaus, his nephew. Although he was only supposed to perform ten labours, this assistance led to him suffering two more. Eurystheus didn't count the Hydra, because Iolaus helped him, or the Augean stables, as he received payment for his work, or because the rivers did the work. Several of the labours involved the offspring (by various accounts) of Typhon and his mate Echidna, all overcome by Hercules.

A traditional order of the labours found in Apollodorus^[2] is:

1. Slay the Nemean Lion.
2. Slay the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra.
3. Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis.
4. Capture the Erymanthian Boar.
5. Clean the Augean stables in a single day.
6. Slay the Stymphalian Birds.
7. Capture the Cretan Bull.
8. Steal the Mares of Diomedes.
9. Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.
10. Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon.
11. Steal the apples of the Hesperides (He had the help of Atlas to pick them after Hercules had slain Ladon).
12. Capture and bring back Cerberus.

As a reward for finishing these twelve treacherous tasks, he was given the gift of immortality after his death by his father Zeus. Hera forgave him and gave him her daughter Hebe for his bride.

I would like to focus your attention to number 5, The cleaning of the Augean stables in a Single day.  The mess in the stables was a result of 1000  healthy immortal cattle making cow pies.  It was such a donning task to clean the mess because it was a result of 30 years of procrastination!

Procrastination is what caused the huge mess that Hercules had to clean as a task.  I have come to realize that my large load of blogs that must be done are the accumulative mess I now must deal with in a single days.  Luckily, I have 2 more left...not much but still more than one.  The problem is that I must somehow figure out how to divert my brain flow to create more blogs.

I feel much like Hercules currently, choosing to face this large task with an open mind, and using a little imagination create some truly (hopefully) amazing blog entries that everyone will enjoy reading.

I have come to the realization that our daily tasks are like boulders that must be continually pushed up a hill, tedious and boring, we tend to try and ignore them.  However, each day that boulder must be pushed to the top, because each evening a new one sits waiting at the bottom for us to push up the next day.  If we keep allowing these to pile up, soon their weight will be too great to move, and we will unfortunately be at a loss.  These boulders sit on us, weighing us down and becoming a great burden on our lives.  For instance, currently I feel as if I have all the boulders of my procrastination bearing down on my neck and shoulders...some would just call this stress.  However, I know its more mythological than that. Sisyphus was punished by the Gods, and in his punishment he had to roll a boulder up a hill every day just to watch it fall back to its original spot each evening.  This is the general human life, we must do each of our tasks each day, for new ones will always be forming.  Sometimes it is painful, however, it must be done in order to go on with life.  I personally do not want to end up like Atlas, with the weight of the world on my shoulders.  Instead I will take the boulder, I will act as a hero and I will roll it up the hill each day.  This will be the cycle of life, and endless circle of tasks that must be completed.

This is my new goal at least for next semester.  Now that I know there is myth behind every action, I will simply look for the myth in all my actions, and I will follow what the heros and Gods did before me.  I will not be so oblivious as not to see my fate engraved in the basket that I carry.  

1 blog finished, A tidal wave more to go!!