When I was reading the latest blog from Tierney Lab (in the Science section of the NY Times), I thought my head was going to fall off I was nodding so much. It reminded me of head banging to Enya, in a sense. The point is not that the author of this blog can combine the words "head banging" and "Enya" in a coherent sentence; rather, the point has to do with the blog post itself, titled "Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow."

I realized this really described my whole life.

The blog ultimately described why people procrastinate on pleasurable things (opening that nice bottle of wine or using the gift card) and how that can have negative impacts in our lives (the wine never gets open or the gift card expires).

Writes John Tierney:

It sounds odd, but this is actually a widespread form of procrastination — just ask the airlines and other marketers who save billions of dollars annually from gift certificates that expire unredeemed. Or the poets who have kept turning out exhortations to seize the day and gather rosebuds.

But it has taken awhile for psychologists and behavioral economists to analyze this condition. Now they have begun to explore the strange impulse to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today...

When there is no immediate deadline, we’re liable to put off going to the zoo this weekend because we assume that we will be less busy next weekend — or the weekend after that, or next summer. This is the same sort of thinking that causes us to put the gift certificate in the drawer because we expect to have more time for shopping in the future.

We’re trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained, but we’re not accurate in our estimates of “resource slack,” as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Once you start procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be...

“People can become overly focused on an ideal,” Dr. Shu said. “Even if they know it’s unlikely, they get so focused on the perfect scenario that they block everything else. Or they anticipate that they’ll kick themselves later if they take second-best option and then see the best one is still available. But they don’t realize that regret can go the other way. They’ll end up with something worse and regret not taking the second-best one.”

...Another tactic is to give yourself deadlines. Cash in the miles by summer, even if you can’t get a round-the-world trip out of them. Instead of waiting for a special occasion to indulge yourself, create one.

Thus ever goes my life. I've always been like this. I squirreled away all of my "good" candy at Christmas and Easter and Halloween, determined to save it for later. Then, of course, the candy went bad and I had to throw it out. I wasn't trying to avoid eating the food--I saved that fun little game for much later--but I wanted to eat the object of my desire at the "perfect" time. The night before a big test at school, say, or a windy, blustery day to brew that special cup of hot cocoa. Never mind, of course, that I'm a bit of a spaz and typically don't think of Ways to Be Nice to Carrie when I'm tremendously stressed. Or that I end up throwing the candy out because I haven't found the "perfect" occasion on which to have it.

When I have my massive to-do list, I usually try to get the dreaded jobs out of the way first. If I'm really overwhelmed, I'll start with the easy tasks (get shower, fold laundry) to get myself going, but then it's on to the icky stuff. I save the best for last. I do it when I'm eating, and always have. I don't like cherry flavored things--I have crap lungs and guzzled bottles of Robitussin as a kid as I got one bout of bronchitis/pneumonia/whatever after another--and so with a bag of Skittles, I'd separate out the red ones and eat those first. I always always ate the green ones last, because I love lime.

I have several unused gift cards in my possession- one for Coldstone Creamery from my birthday almost two years ago now. Part of the reason I haven't used it was related to the eating disorder relapse. That's not too hard to figure out. But I had the card for well over a year before I started relapsing, and even went to Coldstone during that time, gift card in wallet, and deliberately didn't use it. Why? I wanted to save it for a time when I wanted ice cream but money was tight, for a time when I deserved an extra little treat, for...sometime that wasn't now. Only, I never think I deserve an extra little treat (which is a whole issue unto itself), and now I'm left with an unused gift card that may or may not still be valid.

I like looking forward to potential pleasure in the future, but I get anxious and uncertain when I think about enjoying something nice RIGHT NOW. Which could also be one of the major themes of my eating disorder, when you get right down to it. I tortured myself on a day-to-day basis (okay, hour-to-hour or minute-to-minute basis, when you get right down to it) in the hopes that tomorrow or the next day or maybe next year, I will have what I want. Except tomorrow or the next day or the next year, I will be thinking the same damn thing and so life goes on and you approach 30 and start scratching your head and wondering what in the hell just happened with your life.

Sigh.

John Tierney summarized the moral of the story best:

Remember the advice offered in the movie “Sideways” to Miles, who has been holding on to a ’61 Cheval Blanc so long that it is in danger of going bad. When Miles says he is waiting for a special occasion, his friend Maya puts matters in perspective:

“The day you open a ’61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion.”