Procrastination & Satisfaction

I catch myself frequently assigning a date other than the present for whenever I’ll feel satisfied with my daily life. Some of it’s procrastination; I tend to put off today what (I convince myself) can be done tomorrow. I dread the hours a 20-page research paper will require so I put it off hoping that in another day I actually want to sit at my computer for hours on end. My quality of life, I tell myself, will improve exponentially when it’s done. I’ll be able to get up in the early morning and sip coffee by the window while reading the news, workout and run before noon, taking the rest of the day to do any number of unproductive tasks I see fit… whenever the paper’s done.

I can’t mentally dismiss assigned academic work, as some apparently can, and blissfully watch movies or hang out. Whether it’s a lengthy paper or impending exam, it sticks in the back of my mind and follows me around constantly announcing its presence like the kid-sister that insisted upon torturing you throughout your childhood. Required work and tasks that must be done occupy my mind, at least on some subterranean level, and lead me to assume that I would be much happier if those things weren’t there.

Life generally strikes me in a similar way. I barely make enough to sustain my frugal lifestyle and wish that I had more leisure time to pursue my interests independent of work and school. I’ve been pegging October as the period when these dreams would be actualized but now with the unrelenting business of my schedule it may not be until December. There’s so much which has to be done which gets in the way of the friends with whom I’d like to hang out, the books I’d like to read, and the time when I’d like to relax, etc., that I long for the day when those obligations and necessities aren’t there. I’m beginning to suspect that this will be how life always falls, unless I turn to monasticism, which would probably eliminate a lot of those extracurricular activities I miss.

Hopefully the future involves financial stability without requiring all of those painstaking hours of weekly slave labor as a teenage maid. However, I wonder if I'm naively concluding that satisfaction is contingent upon situational factors rather than a personal choice to make the most of what one has. What if there are always things which we wish weren't part of our lives... does this necessitate discontentment? I'm leaning towards no.