Delayed Life Syndrome

Do you put off living and enjoying things until later? I recently caught myself with a mild form of delayed life syndrome.

Do you put off living and enjoying things until later?

I recently caught myself with a mild form of delayed life syndrome.

It shows up for me in various ways, but here’s a fresh example I noticed recently.

Whenever I’m in stationery shops or themed stores, I like buying myself nice notebooks and various planners for productivity and ideas.

Here’s the thing: the nicer and more stylish a notebook I buy myself, the more I hate to “waste” it on ordinary, day-to-day notes. I’ll happily carry around an old, thick planner in my backpack that I don’t mind using up.

Meanwhile, 7-8 beautiful, stylish notebooks sit in my closet for years, waiting for a moment that never comes.

Once I noticed this pattern, I grabbed the two nicest notebooks and started actually filling them with my current ideas, writing in them regularly.

Now, instead of saving my best things for some hazy future, they get to bring me joy right now.

These realisations seem simple and obvious, and yet sometimes it takes a while to notice these signs of “delayed life syndrome” in yourself.

Does this happen to you too? Maybe it all traces back to childhood — when there was a set of good dishes in the cupboard, saved for some special occasion that never actually arrived?