Semi-deliberately puting things off until it is almost too late to do them and then you become afraid to do them and then you basically never leave your house out of fear...uh...c/d, I guess?

FOR EXAMPLE I failed at least eight classes at Boise State because I would get terribly anxious about going to one lecture or such, and then not go to three more, and get terrified at what I imagined the teacher's reaction would be if I returned after my fearful sabbatical, and then never ever go again and fail the class.

OR even just with homework: I miss one and then get this weird discomfort about completing any future homeworks and then never completing those or any other homeworks. (This is what I am struggling with right now, to do these late calc problems that are online homework and what is really stopping me is THIS form of procrastination, which is FEAR that makes little sense, even to me.)

OR or even with household tasks. (Warning: following story is gross) One time I lived alone in this studio and I had left some rice in my rice cooker on the counter. I never threw the rice away or put the rice in the fridge, and every day as it looked more and more B-movie terror I got more afraid of touching the rice cooker or even going into the kitchen. (This was two weeks before I moved – I ended up just throwing it away bcz I had developed this terrified relationship w/it & obv also bcz it was revolting to even see.)

And this is the worst: I think I killed a gerbil, at age eight, because of this phenomenon – I hadn't cleaned its cage in forever and I just felt more & more guilty, and more & more afraid to do it, so I never cleaned its cage. I think that's why it died.

wtf anyway so that's my thing

i have done this with college applications and am now finding myself doing it with grad school apps

ugh son, this is basically my life

Like basically I ended up going to college 2 instead of college 1 because I put off applying to college 1 until after the deadline. And now my GRE score and transcipts are due in a month and um I haven't taken the necessary steps. ugh.

what calc problems?

i know exactly what you mean, abbz.

I am this way with email.

there's something sickly fascinating about watching failures fester and seeing how ugly they get

wow, that is an amazing summary

I'm doing this with a big paper right now, and pretty much do this constantly.

this was totally the six years i spent at university. luckily i was *just* able to turn my guilt into action at the last minute and get things done, but instead of getting better as time went on, i actually got worse. if i started writing a paper at 12 midnight and got it in one time (which at the time would seem about as close to the wire as you could get with a paper), the next time it would be two, then four...the worst was a half-hour minute presentation for a grad course i had to give at 10 am and which i didn't start until about six AM. complete fucking torture, and i had to field questions after. this habit did cut severely into my social life at times because i would put things off all week and when the weekend came the double-motive of finally getting it done when there was no one around and paying penance for my previous laziness would kick in and i would stay home. of course i would then watch sports highlights on a loop or whatever and hate myself even more. the only upside is at the time, when you do get it in with three minutes to spare on your third extension and you're reasonably sure that it is good, is that you have that exhilaration of driving through yet another dark night of the soul and surviving, even if your hands are shaky from coffee and ephedrine. i'm just glad i got out of school when i did because it was getting really ridiculous.

xposts agreed. i think it might be the death drive acting up or something. dud.

because I would get terribly anxious about going to one lecture or such, and then not go to three more, and get terrified at what I imagined the teacher's reaction would be if I returned after my fearful sabbatical, and then never ever go again and fail the class.

i have this recurring nightmare where i've been registered for a music class all semester, and i haven't showed up until like the last class, and there's a big performance the next night and i'm completely unprepared and terrified that i'll be struggling to stay on book and follow along while everyone else has the material memorized.

My cousin rang me the other day because shes moved here and I was hoping she wouldnt bother to call cos I dont rly like her and so far I havent called her back and the longer I put it off the more it looks rude and will look lame when I do eventually call back and even then what do I say? I dont want to have drinks with someone I havent even seen in 15 years and didnt like then >:|

yeah i also do this with keeping in touch -- i'll always end the back and forth one step early and just let it sit there. so stupid. like really all i would have to write back to someone would be "yeah sure, sounds good, maybe sometime yeah" but then i don't. i also never eat the ends of vegetables and i really do think there's some weird related fear of finality going on maybe.

except here tied in with a twisted desire for destruction and a fetishizing of entropy of course.

I was thinking the other day that by not doing anything I would not be increasing the entropy of the universe & therefore making the world more ordered. Like using that as an excuse.

Kerm, you are free to do my calc homework if you want – I could send you the link.

http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/Lapidos-ZoloftAnxiety1H.jpg

ha, you don't need my help to fail calculus. i just figure getting started is the hardest part.

xpost

http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n118/mackyfrenz/zoloft.jpg

actually, i take celexa, but you basically describe my life 19-25 before i started taking medication (i am 31).

I am on old-people-quantities of meds as it stands.

I feel like Vladek in Maus every morning. "Artie, why have you made so I must count my pills again?! You disgust me!"

well, that's a start .. i also see a therapist every week, because imagining things like what-would-the-professor-think (speaking as a teacher, i'm sure he'd be surprised and concerned, but not mean about it, as long as you made an honest effort to catch up) is one of the toughest things about anxiety problems, and you basically need someone to train you how *not* to think those things, or at least to patiently explain to you why you do, so that you can train yourself not to think that way.

it's funny because i took six years to graduate college and i did the EXACT! same thing. i was a crazy perfectionist who'd do all of my physics homework on graph paper with mechanical pencils and i'd take like 10 hours a week to do one class's assignments. and then i'd miss a homework assignment, and then that would become two homeworks, and then i'd stop going to class because i was worried the professor thought i was an awful flake, and then i couldn't face the other students and so on and so forth.

i think in all of those six years i had basically one professor who was rude about it, but because i think he had the wrong impression. actually, he wasn't rude to me, but he asked some of my friends if i thought i was too good to bother coming to class. i must have gone to a half dozen other professors, begging their forgiveness and asking for extensions or incomplete grades and they were always really understanding.

ps as a student you may be able to get free therapy at the school clinic, if you don't mind seeing interns

hai guys, i am retaking the GREs tomorrow. last time i took 'em i got in the 98th/84th percentile (math/verbal). it is four years later, i've got myself an MFA, and on the practice test i tried i got a 95th/50th percentile (math/verbal). this was two weeks ago.

did i study? no!

did i do any prep? no!

am i freaking out? yes!

is this functionally the same thing as 'losing my keys' at the moment i have to go somewhere i don't want to go? fuckyea

i'm an idiot.

It sounds as though you are actually quite smart? At least at taking tests.

I've been in therapy 4 years and I am thinking of taking a break. It's just grueling now.

/abbott'scrazylikeeveryonealreadyknew

yo HOOS if you do that now are you sure you want to go to grad school?! it will be real easy for that tendency to get worse instead of better. unless of course the kind of grad program you'd be doing has nothing to do with essay writing. but for me, it really made the problem a lot worse - i should be trying to be proactive about this user interface design problem at my work that my boss asked some of us to take a crack at - and instead i worry about it & read football blogs during down time..

anyway abbott i hear you - i'm also guilty of not getting in touch with people due to feeling regret about it & then putting it off forever. also for instance selling a pair of boots & a couple of clothing items on ebay recently and worrying so much about sending it a day late that it became about two weeks!

negotiable's first post hits too close to home. i have lots of projects due in the next two weeks and this entire weekend it's been extremely difficult for me to convince myself to actually get any of them started. and the thing about starting last-minute is that i thought it would work in theory the last time i tried it (i tend to get more stuff done when the deadline is staring me in the face) but looking over the results after turning my paper i was really displeased with the level of work i submitted, and now on top of being behind on work i'm more and more afraid of actually starting things and realizing how many more miles i have to go before i've forded these waters

also: fear of asking professors for help so late in the semester for fear that they'll be all "you're asking me this NOW??". which is a totally unfounded fear but it's one that's still there

/abbott'scrazylikeeveryonealreadyknewelse

I never had to really work hard, so I never developed a work ethic.

remy what are you thinking of going back to grad school for? sorry if this is too personal to ask on here...getting 95 on the practice test is a very good sign tho!

Story of my recent life too. Most disappointingly, I've just done this with job applications in the last couple of weeks. I became aware of the deadlines literally months ago, but just couldn't bring myself to start on the applications as I found them difficult & stressful to think about, until suddenly it was the weekend before they're due and they're still not done... I ended up doing them at the very last possible moment, rushing for, and in fact just missing, midnight on the final day.

Unsurprisingly, the outcome so far has been rejection. How do I feel? Useless and wretched, like fail personified.

Oh man I do this with all work ever. I thought it would stop after dropping out of uni but no, having a job is just the same. It's not even really anxiety in any textbook-anxiety-symptoms way, I just can't see where to start, so I don't, and with the passing of weeks it becomes the hugest most daunting task ever, and I can't remember why I can't start it but I know I can't, and the night before the deadline I'm pacing round thinking of how I'd rather hack limbs off than turn up but still not starting it, and...

Also it's taken me like three months to book a physio appt, and I told the boyfriend and he was all like "oh, at last. Have you phoned [people about something else that isn't working]?" NO NO NO PLEASE LET ME FEEL GOOD FOR A DAY BEFORE THE NEXT ITEM ON THE NAGGING LIST IS LOOKED AT.

I should probably totally not post this from work but uh. I'm ok with the small immediate tasks, so I keep myself busy with those, and there sure are a lot of those too, so I'm not JUST slacking. Er.

I do this so much...it is awful. I do this when I'm owed money and stuff...the worst. Like they owe me fucking money and I procrastinate getting it, then end up broke or something on rent day!

let's just say i'm going to be keeping an eye on this thread in the hope that someone will turn up w/a magic solution :(

(when i was at school [high school], my parents would constantly nag about how they felt i wasn't being stretched enoughm that i was coasting...and i'd be all like, look, i'm getting straight As, stop complaining. then i got to university, completely unequipped with anything like a work ethic. i still don't have one, it's rather stressful. it's the effort which it takes to start a piece of work which is what always stymies me...once i finally get started (the day before the deadline, or in some cases the day after) i'm fine, and even quite enjoy it)

one thing i've got a lot better at since university is not putting everything else off until the huge project is done...recognising when i'm veering into a rut and just going, fuck it, go for a walk or do the washing up or send the couple of minor emails which are also hanging over my head.

I might just be projecting here, but I think "I coasted all the way to college and then realized I had no work ethic" covers a significant portion of ILXors (myself included).

I'm really bad at this. I have a nasty habit of not paying bills until I get a red letter and charged fifty quid and have nasty men knocking on my door, even though I can pay straight away and it would cause a lot less stress. I've made something of a resolution in the last few months to not do this, but god knows how that'll turn out.

I always put this weird habit of mine down to the whole low-self-esteem-hence-self-destructive trait. To what extent does that description cover ilxors? (projection again, sorry)

And work is like that as well. I remember finishing a massive project that's taken about a month to write, and it was all going great, until the last couple of modules on the last day, which I had to force myself to write. Not because it was hard code or anything, I just had a overwhelming urge to put them off and do something non-productive.

I might just be projecting here, but I think "I coasted all the way to college and then realized I had no work ethic" covers a significant portion of ILXors (myself included).

― BIG WORLD HOOS. WEBSTEEN. (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, December 2, 2008 5:01 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i wish this was me; instead i was real ambitious up until about halfway thru college, then i got all lazy (not really lazy but more like ... wtf am i doing with myself??) and now i spend my time wondering wtf happened

DUD! the opening post here is very much me. this whole semester has been like this, staying up all day and night finishing my papers just days before even if I've had them available since september. and now I'm stuck with an essay (or what you call thesis I guess?) which is going nowhere and I'm on ilx.

the opening post here is very much me.

it's me unmedicated. A lot of bad things are me unmedicated, but that's basically a description of what I was medicated for. Not that it necessarily worked.

i am really bad at this too. worst is putting off going to the doctor until you finally decide to do it, find out they are closed on weekends and go back to having a festering problem for weeks until i finally went back in the week and found out i am not dying. fun times.

oh yeah, and the pile of books piling up to read for uni, finding a job, doing anything really. if i didn't have an excuse, then i'd add changing out my pjs.

wtf anyway so that's my thing

fear + self-loathing, I think. I wonder a lot what my problem is with finishing things, and I worry that somewhere in the back of my mind I'm half-hoping that I die before any of it becomes a problem. Which would necessitate getting hit by a bus, and yet I look both ways when I cross the street.

So I don't know.

Me not on meds = first post. Me on antidepressants = still not doing stuff but not really giving a toss either. Improvement? Dunno. Not tried anxiety or ADD meds, what with not being diagnosed as either of those.

Therapists also not much use for this in my experience as they've all had a pet theory of what is wrong with everyone, and if you say you are very bothered by not feeling able to get things done they say "yes yes, that's just a symptom, we need to focus on my pet theory and everything else will fall into place". Which is not very useful when their pet theory of underlying problem doesn't really seem to apply to you, or only a little as a side-effect.

Closest diagnosis was being scared of failing so not actually doing it in the hope that I can then go "oh, but I didn't really try, so it's not a failure" except end result is like the worst kind of fail applicable anyway, over and over again, so WHY CAN'T I STOP, or rather learn to START, dammit wah etc.

This is exactly why the IRS is trying to garnish the wages of my weekly Dj night.

Semi-deliberately puting things off until it is almost too late to do them and then you become afraid to do them and then you basically never leave your house out of fear...uh...c/d, I guess?

OMG OMG this is me about everything. this is also true with anything that involves picking up the phone

i probably wanted to start this thread like years ago too but been putting it off.

I got away with this pretty well through college until I started my senior thesis and basically just pulled a belly flop--did OK cause my prof is a good guy but I still can't think about it without being totally ashamed by it. Also doing it now at my job and constantly worrying that I'm going to be fired over it.

This thread is making me feel so much less alone, thanks everyone.

this is literally the worst thing, and i get worse at dealing with it and not better as i get older.

do you do drugs? this stopped for me, at least in terms of really major things or even medium positive things, around the time i cut way back on doing es.

My wife does this with some things and she's never been anywhere near ecstasy. As it were.

yeah i've found different people have different experiences.

That's a bullshit.

Is this related to that thing people do when they stop shaving until a large task is completed?

it's, like, a personal message to me that this thread is at the top of new answers when I'm only here to put off the work I need to get done IN THE NEXT HOUR.

he said, writing a post instead of fleeing.

it's kind of amazing how easy it is to spend a few hours, a day, a week, a month, ..., permanently on the cusp of finally getting started on something that needs to be done.

i just dropped an online biology class because of this

I was the master of this during college. I really should have understood that I was mentally ill or had an anxiety disorder, really.

Step one: do a mediocre job on an assignment or be late in turning it in, as you were otherwise busy or procrastinated everything and ran out of time.
Step two: next week, feel really guilty about it, try to do this week's work without really having had a handle on last week's, which you really want to return to and study what you did wrong until you understand it, but...
Step three: Overwhelming sense of dread
Step four: Finals come up, you have the weight of all these loose ends over you, and you just hope it goes ok and you can pretend to forget about the crushing anxiety and guilt. When not studying, depression and anxiety are bad enough you are hiding in bed ten hours per day.

Rinse, repeat, and have occasional guilt and anxiety attacks about that course for the next year or so.

(note that I am, thankfully, no longer this person)

i guess i still am so thanks?

get help now

I said that a little too quickly -- I mean, if it's really that bad, don't live that way! It doesn't require much more than a shift in perspective or a difference in viewing when something is "done" and you can get a sense of closure. Some things are never really done in life, but so many really are to the extent it's not worth dwelling on the others.

I mean, you dropped your class, that is a much more decisive action than I was capable of at the time.

maybe these things we hate doing and put off doing aren't actually worth doing?
tax season coming up.

exactly, "done" can mean "I have chosen to never do this activity"

life is disgusting and horrible, why do anything ever

I never it

whenever I read about people with ADHD or tremor disorders miraculously enter states of deep concentration when playing video games or performing complicated surgery, I feel like these aren't impaired people at all -- the world is just boring.

i have this problem so bad. a few things i have improved, like work stuff. sometimes i force myself to listen to my voice mails NOW and stuff like that.

my life :(

"get help now"

uh... how do we do that again? when I was officially clinically depressed and in the few years afterwards I would see doctors and counsellors and psychologists and my number one complaint would be basically this thread and they would all be all "never mind that, let us discuss some other problem that isn't even bothering you" so here I still am (although less of the hiding in bed, now I just hide on the sofa's internetty embrace)

i don't know how i could be helped, i don't have faith in it. occasionally i believe i can just take things one by one and get used to doing them NOW.

sometimes I have good days or weeks or even longer and I think "hurrah, I am fixed now and am finally a productive adult member of society" but then the next thing rolls around and I'm back to my old bad habits

I suppose I need to work out what the psychological difference between the good tasks or the good weeks and the bad ones really is

(or just get better at pushing on regardless, but that hasn't really been happening so far)

i hate how it's like i know i could make this better if i would be rational and just fucking do the stuff (like clean up after you make dinner) and not let it pile up but my brain is not working like a brain

oh yeah this includes not returning library items. i used to be obsessive about not being late to the library. i would walk there at night if the thing was due. recently i didn't return something (out of storage, no one was looking for it i'm sure) for like 4 weeks. now i have a dvd you have to pay a fee for i didn't return last week. the thing is i never even get to watching or reading these things. i used to be a consumer of books and movies and now i just move them from one building to another and back.

i have sort of been getting exercise lately but i have to talk myself into it

i know it should be fixable but i haven't figured out how to fix everything. at work i am required to manage my own stuff and there are severe consequences to putting things off. generally i am able to do that. i have a google calendar full of deadlines and i look at it several times a day to see what i could be working on. i calendar things within a day of getting new deadlines. that seems to work. it's where consequences are not that bad that i let things pile up.

i hate how it's like i know i could make this better if i would be rational and just fucking do the stuff (like clean up after you make dinner) and not let it pile up but my brain is not working like a brain
― veryupsetmom (harbl)

otm

c'mon, be a brain, brain (moran)

haw i just finally emailed something i had to email yesterday, server timestamp 23:58

i'm doing this volunteer work that i actually feel really strongly about and its genuinely really interesting and exciting for me and i just keep not doing it. like explaining it to myself rather than ever allotting time for it, i am constantly embarrassed by how long its been since worked on it last and how it needs just so much relentless work and then i burrow further and further into the most anxious part of my belly.

I get the boosters boosting, I get computers semi-deliberately puting

I deal with realizing it's not a matter of "wow, I am transformed into an adult human now" but a matter of vigilance. I mean, you don't hear people with diabetes saying "wow, I have shit worked out" and then throwing out their test strips and insulin.

As for the dishes in my sink, I solve it by prioritizing. Can I live my life and still have my dirtbag things I put off? Sure. Do they eventually make me feel bad? Yes, but I have a two part routine -- I follow it by going shopping for some foods I'd want to cook, coming home to see the dirty dishes, and roll the positive energy into cleaning them.

Also, drugs help.

I mean, it's not a fact of having faith in being helped per se, it's the idea that you have to change. If you are prone to depression, it's not "the time I was clinically depressed," it's "I have to keep shit level or I will lapse into this." Sometimes, maybe most times, it can't be avoided and you have to go the difficult routes. But I've reached the point where I'm realizing I'm self-enabling anxiety all over the place and have to get the hell out.

tbf I never had a handle until I saw several people completely self-destruct in front of me, and it nearly happened to me. As in, they lost or had to quit their jobs, broke their relationships, and nearly died.

I feel I've been a dick to those who are chronically depressed or anxious and have had little respite. Sorry, all.

I find myself relating to a lot of this, particularly with regard to creative stuff and the anxiety that entails. I feel like my creative output(if I can rather pompously call it that) has been totally negligible over the last few years, and it's almost entirely due to the paralysis that results from having ideas for things but no willpower to actually see them through.

For example, I have this blogging idea I've been toying with for the last two years - as often happens, I was really enthused to begin with but this soon turned into gloom at the prospect of having to produce updates on a regular basis. So it was effectively stillborn before I'd even finished writing the first post. Periodically I find myself loading up my blogspot page and looking at the still unpublished post, and sometimes I think "This isn't so bad, I could do something with this." And then I get distracted by something else and it just sits there in blogging limbo for another six months.

It's partly the whole thing of "If I start this, I know I'll just give up so why even start, etc" but also partly guilt that this is not the sort of thing I should be spending time on instead of doing practical things like looking for jobs. But most of all I really, really don't want it to suck. I think what someone said up there about being desperate for validation, but also terrified of it at the same time is spot on. If I were to share what I've been doing with people I like/respect and they weren't interested, part of me feels like there wouldn't be any point carrying on(er, I mean with the blog, not life). I mean, I know it's ridiculous to get so precious over a stupid blog, but still I wouldn't be able to stand knowing I'd done a half-arsed job.

how do you feel about tweeting vs blogging as a low-commitment, less-fraught-with-personal-investment compromise?

re: library return anxiety, my buddy has the world record of not returning a netflix disc. at a certain point it became a bigger achievement to not return it and not watch it.

Hmm, tweeting has never really done it for me - it doesn't scratch the same itch that longer form writing does. I always feel like a bit of a sham when I try and tweet, like in comparison to all the people I follow who are consistently witty and clever, I'm the annoying kid at the grown-ups table going LOOK I DONE THIS LOOOOK

i have a netflix problem too. i do watch the streaming stuff though.

i'm about to start doing some cleaning but every weekend i "start" cleaning and never do it. wishing myself good luck.

i keep trying to think of the best cleaning plan, like front of house to back, or clean 10 minutes a day, but i need to just do it and not think about it

i've been trying the 15 minutes a day thing, but that 15 minutes gets soaked up by things like the washing up every other day so it never goes anywhere.

i need to do laundry but most of the machines in the laundry room i secretly go to are broken and i don't want to walk a whole 3 blocks with all my clothes and find that out. this is fucking ridiculous what my brain does.

i'm having this thing where i signed up for satellite dish tv and it just never works, like most of my channels have at some point stopped working and have never come back on, and i called them about it once months ago and they said i had to pay them extra to have customer service and i said that was stupid and didn't really pursue it because i barely even watch tv anyway but i'm paying for it as part of a phone-tv-internet package every month and i feel like a sucker cos it's not working but don't care enough to know how to navigate the weird phone call where apparently you're supposed to tell them that you are threatening to quit their service even though you have a yearlong agreement with them and will be penalized? and i do want to switch services but don't really even know how to set that up because i don't want to pay cancellation fees + a week or two without internet would be an actual problem for me, so i guess i will just wait out the thing now, and so i guess i've been paying directtv for a few months of tv service that literally just doesn't work out of social anxiety at this point, and will just continue to do so for a few more months? dammit

i'm signed up for a service that has a person deal with phone trees and endless wait times as well. if you'd think it would help, I can gift you one of these tasks, and they can take care of it for you (well as much as a third party can anyway)

I have anxiety disorder, only one psychiatrist in my life has gotten this right. I mean, I panic in crowded areas and places with a lot of yelling. Only thing that helped was ambien - new doctor took that away. So I said "fuck these people" and quit trying. The doctors I see don't listen to me. One told me to cut down on coffee. Last time I had an attack I went go the emergency room, I didn't see a doctor. The CNA said my problem was that I stopped medication (which doesn't do shit for panic attacks. Now I'm in trouble....I'll never get the mess that work because the accumulation of so much bullshit - especially professionals who don't listen - I am afraid of psychiatry. If you tell them this they write you up as "paranoid". These people can really screw up lives. It's as if they all collude to prescribe the same medication for everyone. Bullshit , when do the suits start with all the misdiagnosing going on.

hi

http://images.45cat.com/abba-thats-me-rca-victor.jpg

I am being such a flake about replying to an email from an old friend, hating myself so much for leaving it so late, feeling sure they'll hate me for leaving it so late so I need a v v good excuse which I don't have so I need to put it off some more until I've thought of one, etc

the unanswered email was an invitation to an event (still in the future but probably now long past the date when final numbers were needed) which is totally setting off my social anxiety and shame at my terrible self, but every time I start to write "sorry I can't make it" I hate myself some more for wimping out and then go back down the loop of yes-but-no, thinking of all the overwhelming possibilities, and also how presumptuous to write that I'd like to come as if it were not surely far too late to say so, etc

("etc" includes further logistical complications which exist at a difficult intersection of my and my bf's anxieties)

Semi-deliberately puting on masks after it is almost too late to do that and then you become afraid to do that and then you basically never leave your house out of fear...uh...c/d, I guess?

I had to scrap my car in April this year.

Because I hate phone calls I didn't immediately cancel the annual insurance on it, but instead put it off, of course.

I initially didn't realise that if I did cancel my insurance I would be rebated for the unused portion of it, but even when I did, as per the thread title, I didn't phone them until just now when the renewal is looming. At this point the rebate I'm due is less than the policy cancellation charge, so I actually owe them money. Having told them that I no longer have the car, they also couldn't let the policy continue to the renewal date for me to simply let it expire, so I would have to either cancel it or put a different car on. As I have no plans to replace the scrapped car, cancelling was my only option.

So my own useless prevarication has not only lost me what could have been a decent rebate if I'd cancelled when I first got rid of the car, but is now actually costing me more money.

Big sigh of self defeat.