There’s a paper application for a U.S. passport that sat on my desk for a year.
Printed. Creased at one corner. Slightly faded from sun. It became furniture. I’d see it every morning, feel a small twinge of I should really do that, and then do literally anything else. Dishes. Email. Reorganizing a drawer that did not need reorganizing.
That sheet of paper wasn’t a passport application anymore. It was a monument to procrastination. A little laminated-looking shrine to later.
This is the story of how I finally knocked it out — and the embarrassingly short amount of time it actually took once I stopped negotiating with myself.
First, the cost of “later”
Before I get to the how, let me be honest about the why-it-mattered, because this is the part that stings.
Not having a passport isn’t a neutral state. It’s not a blank space. It’s a closed door, and doors close on specific things.
My cousin got married in Cancun. I wasn’t there.
My brother and my Dad took a trip to the Philippines — the kind of trip that, when you’re talking about a father and his sons, doesn’t come around on a schedule. I wasn’t there for that either.
I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to wrap this in melodrama. It wasn’t a tragedy. Life went on. Photos got posted. People said “wish you were here” and meant it kindly.
But here’s the quiet truth: procrastination doesn’t feel like a decision, which is exactly why it’s so expensive. I never sat down and chose to miss Cancun. I never declared, “I will not see my Dad and brother in the Philippines.” I just… didn’t fill out a form. The inaction made the choice for me, silently, in the background, while I told myself I had time.
That’s the trap. Putting something off feels like keeping your options open. It’s the opposite. Every day you don’t act, the world quietly removes options from the table, and you don’t even hear them go.
The barrier I built was made of nothing
When I finally decided — actually decided, not the fake “I’ll get to it” decision — I braced for a bureaucratic nightmare. Endless lines. Confusing forms. A surprise requirement that would send me back to square one.
Here’s what it actually was:
1. The photo (a saga of my own making)
I debated taking the passport photo myself. White wall, good lighting, a tripod, the official dimension requirements pulled up on my phone, cropping it just right, getting the head size correct, printing it at the proper resolution.
I gave it a genuine, valiant attempt. I learned more about head-to-frame ratios than any human should know. Posture matters. Frame position matters. The crop has to be exact or it gets rejected.
Then I drove to Walgreens, where a machine and a slightly bored employee handled the whole thing in about ten minutes for a few bucks. Done. Compliant. No drama.
Lesson: Sometimes the “efficient” DIY path is just procrastination wearing a productivity costume. Pay the small fee. Buy back the friction. Move on.
2. The application that had been waiting a year
I unfolded the form I’d printed twelve months earlier. It was still valid. It had always been valid. It had been sitting there the entire time, asking for maybe fifteen minutes of my attention, and I’d given it three hundred and sixty-five days of avoidance instead.
Filling it out took less time than I’d spent thinking about filling it out on any given Tuesday.
3. The birth certificate run
I needed proof of citizenship for identification, so I booked an appointment at San Francisco City Hall to sort out my birth certificate. One appointment. One building. One line. Handled.
4. The walk-in that saved me
Here’s the part nobody tells you: some U.S. Post Offices take walk-ins for passport applications. No appointment-roulette, no booking a slot three weeks out. I walked in, handed over my documents and photo, paid the fee, and that was it.
5. The wait that wasn’t
They told me 1 to 3 months. I steeled myself for the long haul.
It arrived in two weeks.
Two weeks. After a year of avoidance. The processing time was a rounding error compared to the time I’d spent not starting.
I held the little blue book and felt something between triumph and mild embarrassment. All of that dread, all of that “someday,” and the actual doing of it fit comfortably inside a couple of afternoons.
What this little blue book actually unlocks
It’s not really about the passport. It never is.
What I’m holding now isn’t a document — it’s a yes. A standing yes to the next wedding in another country. A yes to the spontaneous “hey, want to come?” text. A yes to a future trip with my Dad and brother that I will not be watching from a group chat.
The world is open again. Not because anything external changed — but because I removed the one obstacle that was entirely within my control the whole time.
The actual lessons (the part you can steal)
If you’ve got your own version of that paper on the desk — the thing you’ve been “getting to” for months — here’s what I’d hand you:
- The dread is bigger than the task. Almost always. The story your brain tells you about how hard something will be is the obstacle. The task itself is usually a Tuesday afternoon.
- Inaction is a decision with no memory. You won’t remember deciding to miss the thing. You’ll just notice, later, that you missed it. Don’t let the default choose for you.
- Buy back friction whenever you can. The DIY photo, the “I’ll figure out the cheaper way” — that’s often procrastination in disguise. A small fee to remove a hurdle is one of the best deals in life.
- Break it into embarrassingly small steps. Photo. Form. Birth certificate. Walk in. Pay. Each one is doable in isolation. The “whole project” is what paralyzes you — so don’t look at the whole project. Look at the next step only.
- Start the clock. The processing time, the wait, the actual machinery of the world — it often moves faster than you fear. But it can’t start until you do. My two weeks couldn’t begin until I finally moved.
Your turn
So here’s my call to action, and I mean it personally:
What’s your passport?
What’s the thing sitting on your desk — literal or otherwise — that you’ve turned into furniture? The form, the appointment, the call, the application, the first small step toward something you actually want?
Pick one. Not the whole list. One. And do the smallest possible version of the first step today — print the form, book the appointment, walk into the Walgreens. That’s it.
The barrier you’ve built is almost certainly made of nothing. I’d love to be wrong about that, but I rarely am. Mine took two weeks. Yours might take less.
Stop negotiating with later. Be intentional. Take the step.
The world stays open a lot longer than you think — but only if you walk through the door.
Got a “passport” of your own you finally tackled — or one you’re staring down right now? I’d genuinely love to hear it. Hit reply, or send your story to bernard@thegreatberad.com. Real stories about growing through the stuff we put off are exactly what this place is for.
— Stay rad.
