Below is a lovely meditation on procrastination and the virtues of persistence from Sven Herselman.  Used with kind permission.

Procrastination, I’m the master of it, or maybe it’s sometimes the master of me.

I also enjoy going camping, but I have to admit that even though I have been living for over a year in one of the very best countries for

camping, I haven’t managed a weekend away.

The latter is probably the reason behind the former.

My wife and I had been making plans to go camping since late last year (yes, the procrastination is that bad sometimes).

We bought all the kit that a camper needs – tent, sleeping bags, camping table, camping chairs, gas burner, the list seems stupidly long at the end, but I guess it’s all needed.

We had initially planned to go for a weekend at Lake Rotoiti around mid to late February – the time that the weather is at its best, and most importantly its warmest.

Well, one thing came up on the first weekend we had set aside then another thing on the next, then rain looked likely on another, and then I left booking a campsite until it was too late and so on, until we were looking at an autumn trip or nothing at all.

The first weekend in April would have to do, even though I was doing the GrapeRide on the Saturday morning.

It wasn’t a big problem though, I thought, as my wife was working until lunch time anyway – I would finish the ride in good time and we could leave soon after she finished at 2.30pm.

Now you are probably expecting to read about how the trip was once again put off, but this time we pulled it off, even if we only left about 4.30pm.

We ended up making camp in the quickly fading light and were pretty cold at night, but it was an amazing weekend with forest walks, fishing and just sitting and enjoying nature.

Procrastination may have won out for a while, but we got there in the end.