Perspectives On Responsibility

Any of you who know me well know that I tend to procrastinate a bit. I have often attributed this to one of two factors: 1.) My self-labeled ability to "work well under pressure" or 2.) My innate skills at the task at hand. Lately I have examined this aspect of my life and found I just may be a bit lazy. Laziness is something that we are all guilty of at times, but it is an undesirable trait nonetheless. A few things have happened recently that have led me to some insights about responsibility, personal and otherwise.
As far as personal responsibility goes, I found with the recent storms here in my home state that sometimes one must shoulder burdens that precipitate based on the lack of personal responsibility of others. For example, the storms brought tree limbs among other things crashing to the ground here. I ended up with sizeable branches from my neighbor's tree in my yard. I must inform you that by saying this I do not blame my neighbor for the slight damage to my property, merely that some responsibility on their part in the way of trimming their trees may have led to the situation being less troublesome.
The more irksome situation that has led me to ponder the issue of responsibility came about as the result of civic government here failing to take responsibility for certain actions or lack of actions more fittingly. I realize that widespread destruction to utility assets takes some time to mop up, but it is the responsibility of an effective local government to communicate with it's residents. The local government here has failed and continues to fail to perform this basic task. I had to be informed by a power company employee that restoring power to my neighborhood was "not a priority" shortly before all of their crews left my neighborhood without restoring power. While I appreciated the fact that the worker informed me, i was disappointed in the local government which runs the local power utility. This message should have been communicated to us from a higher source. This information did not appear on "local" media until 4 or 5 hours later. Side note: We lost power at 12:30am yesterday and are still without power. I am posting this from a location other than my home that is blessed with the gift of electricity. Again, my neighbors and I must shoulder the burden of finding information and alternate locations with electricity due to the lack of responsibility on the part of the local government.
I am not posting this as a rant or a judgement of our local government or our utilities. I understand that the power workers and local government officials are trying their best. I am posting this merely to illustrate the point that sometimes responsibility is thrust upon a person because of the lack of responsibility on the part of the original party who had the responsibility in the first place. Therefore, I will strive to not procrastinate in the future and take responsibility for what I must, if for no other reason than to avoid forcing another individual to shoulder a responsibility that should have been mine. This is a good take-away for anyone.