What I’ve Been Putting Off

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What have you been putting off doing? Why?

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Here’s a list of things I’ve been putting off:

• Boxes of papers from ten years ago that I packed under the stairs.
• An old bicycle that needs to be repaired or re-homed.
• Books in my library that I can’t take when we downsize.
• A tax return that needs unhurried time.
• A garden bed overgrown with weeds.

At first glance, it’s just a list of chores. But they form a quiet constellation — pieces of life I’ve postponed because they each deserve more than a rushed hour squeezed between meetings and errands.

The boxes hold history. Old letters, minutes from committees, ideas scribbled in the margins of conference notes. I tell myself I’ll need a week off to sort them properly, but maybe it’s not time I’m waiting for. Maybe it’s readiness — the emotional courage to look back and decide what still matters.

The bicycle once represented movement. Freedom, exercise, fresh starts. Now the chain is rusted and the tyres flat, as though time itself deflated them. I keep it because it holds an earlier hope — one I’m not quite ready to discard, even if I never ride it again.

The books are trickier. They are the archive of my mind, the landscape of years spent thinking, teaching, and dreaming. Choosing which to part with feels like deciding which memories to keep. Each title is a conversation I’ve had, or might still have, with someone wiser than me.

The tax return is more mundane but no less revealing. It’s not the paperwork I dread; it’s the mental clutter. I want a quiet day, a clean desk, a clear head — the kind of order that life rarely grants without permission.

And then there’s the garden bed — wild, weedy, defiant. I keep blocking it out, but it keeps reminding me that growth doesn’t stop just because I’ve been busy. It’s spring again. The sun lingers longer. Renewal is still possible.

When I look at the list as a whole, it feels less like a catalogue of delay and more like a map of transition — between seasons, identities, and priorities. What I’ve been putting off are not tasks so much as decisions about what to carry forward.