Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

In case you haven’t noticed, my wife and I are different.  She prefers being nice and I prefer being blunt.  She likes the familiar, I like the novel.  I like competition, she likes cooperation.  She wants to plan ahead with lots of cushion for mishaps, I want to postpone decisions way past their due date.  We aren’t completely different: we both like eating on the sofa instead of at the kitchen table, me with a pile of spicy, fruity, sweet and salty foods and her with bland food groups neatly separated into equal shares on her plate and eaten proportionally throughout, washed down with water… her with a dainty napkin and me with a protective towel (from her) which ends up scrunching down between the seat and arm while food spills on my shirt and pants. and sometimes on the couch. The dogs follow her back into the kitchen for the fat and gristle they won’t find left on my plate.  While she’s on her second bite, I’ve finished my dinner, burning my mouth on food I can’t wait to cool… unless I’m in the middle of a project and eat dinner 3 hours late, in which case we don’t eat together (given all her promptitude), but we both eat on the sofa (which was my point).
… unless I eat without a plate while leaning over the sink.  Hey, it prevents food stains!

So like most couples we have our similarities and differences, and the differences tend to cause problems, like when we went phone shopping this week.  We finally caved to the pressure of buying smart phones since Kimberly’s work situation seems to require it.  We’ve been talking about it for a few months and Kimberly had marked her mental calendar with a personal deadline, mentioning the expectation now and again so we would be on the same page.  Same page, different books.  Finally the time had come and I wasn’t ready–I was still in volume 1 “Thinking About Being Ready to Start to Plan for New Phones” and she was finished with volume 2 “Making a Decision About Which Phone to Buy” and was now on the last page of volume 3 “Buying a Phone.”

You know the whole thing about my postponing decisions for the greater good?  Well this goes into overdrive when it involves spending money.  The longer you can hobble along without spending cash, the better off you are–the lazy man’s savings account.  I’m all for quality of life improvements as long as they’re free–who needs to fix a leaky roof as long as you have pots to catch the trickles?  Being a default foot-dragger for any decision, I become a butt-dragger over money, a sit-down protester with placards shouting “Just Say No!”  As I explained the conflicting viewpoints to my wife, “Every day delayed is a victory for me but a defeat for you.”  She came home with a smart phone.  I’m sticking with my same dumb phone, even though I’ve hated it for two years.  How can you argue with free?

Procrastination requires no thought.  Thoughtlessness is actually rewarded because you win the game effortlessly, avoiding the stress of decision-making while accumulating points for not spending resources needlessly.  But it has finally dawned on me after eight years of marriage that what works under sole proprietorship does not work in a partnership.  Now when I leave a matter undecided, it does not prolong my freedom to choose, but forfeits that choice to Kimberly.  She is going to cure me of my procrastination without even trying, by just being herself in this relationship.  And that life lesson is free–who can argue with that?