Procrastination in the Time of COVID

People who know me well know that I am prone to procrastination.  Well, that came home with a vengeance yesterday.  My birthday is coming up being April 1stt – no bad jokes about being a fool please but perhaps my procrastination was foolish in this case – but fortunately not too serious.

At the beginning of February, I had received notices about the renewal being required for my drivers licence and vehicle licence – they expire on my birthday.  But no problem – or so I thought – I could go to the Service Ontario office a few blocks away and renew without any fuss or muss before that date.  One of the benefits of small-town life is the usual absence of long line-ups and busy offices.  With my schedule being rather free due to cancellations because of the COVID-19 restrictions on meetings and gatherings, I decided I would do the renewals the next day i.e. today.  Lorna and I were going for a walk yesterday and I noticed that the Service Ontario office had closed because of the pandemic.  What to do.  Well, no problem, I decided to renew on-line which was an option which I don’t usually avail myself of. 

Before going on-line, I thought I better check the expiry of my health card as well.  And, you guessed it, it was expiring as well.  You could say that this was a case of unharmonic convergence as they were all valid for different periods – one year, three years and five years.  In any case, no problem or so I thought - I could renew all of them on-line.  The computer age is wonderful isn’t it.  Well, I did just that - went on-line and managed to eventually get the drivers licence and vehicle licence renewed without too much difficultly.  The health card was a different matter – I was informed that I was not eligible to renew on-line.  What to do?  Apparently, I couldn’t renew on-line or in person.

I tried phoning and the line was busy – probably lots of procrastinators like me wanted to know what to do.  After a few more tries I got through and after not too long a wait on hold under the circumstances, I was able to talk to a real person.  I was informed that there would be no extensions to expired health cards.  However, not all of the Service Ontario offices were closed.  The one in Strathroy – about 20 minutes drive away was open.  It closed in about an hour i.e. five o’clock.  I thought, well no harm in waiting until tomorrow.  Then the outside voice of my conscience i.e. Lorna perked up and said I better go right then as that office could be closed tomorrow as the COVID-19 restrictions were increasing and becoming more real every day.  So, I decided perhaps more procrastination was not a good idea and headed off to Strathroy.

Well, to make a long story short – if it’s not too late, I got the renewal with no delays and no line-ups of any kind and found out that I was not eligible to renew on-line because my renewal notice had been returned as undeliverable.  As rather strange occurrences as I usually don’t have trouble receiving mail. 

In any case, all’s well that ends well as someone said.  Procrastination sometimes does not pay.  Some would say usually it doesn’t pay but I’m not sure I’m quite ready to accept that unconditionally – even in the time of COVID-19.  However, in general I could say that procrastination in the time of COVID is not a good idea.