BY THE END OF THE DAY … IT’S TOMORROW
Friday, December 11, 2020
Can we possibly expect anyone else to care, to understand, to hand a solution to us?
Most of us, most days, most things, we get to work it out ourselves – and while it might be simple to pay someone a fee to hand me a well worked out best solution, or to give me help, the reality of making any dream come true, or causing any problem go away, is by throwing ourselves into it. Sometimes throwing some shite against the wall offers short-term relief, but it is just a short-term relief valve. It’s like cursing. It doesn’t move anything along, but it feels perfect in that moment …
Projects get reshaped countless times in my head before a single keystroke hits any page and before a single call is made or a letter sent. What takes control from all forces tugging at calendar, belly, and brain, is forcing me to get THAT one thing done today?
Once that’s done, the next domino tumbles, to drive me crazy the next day.
What could I do?
What do I want to do?
This untitled and always unresolved saga of innermost conflict …
Internal sanity-quest days, like yesterday, like whittling some log under the pretense of carving a canoe and, by day’s end, getting it fittingly worked down to toothpick size.
Disparate tardy matters for adjudication (deadlines exist only in MY head) – some client-related, some related to marketing, planning next year, some angst-reduction, and some angst-perpetuation.
This is nothing new. Every time though, my focus on wrestling with it improves somehow, both refreshing and agonizing at the same time. There is a constant fluid-daily disconnect in my head between job-list tasks vis-à-vis what is truly important, what drives me, and how I end up spending most of my time working on.
I used to feel I could do that better – in part because I thought I was doing so much, which I was. Still, I now believe that was a delusion of doing valuable work in deference to accomplishing something significant and lasting. Sometimes it seems far less complicated when asked to jump, to simply answer “how high?” because it’s simpler to avoid debate with anyone else. Sometimes argument with someone else might be helpful, but by then, I’m too weary from refereeing those two or more combatants, those points of view duking it out in my head. There is no point, at that stage of exhaustion, to then ask for another opinion when I’ve got too many of those already roiling my brain.
I’ll ask for outside input tomorrow …
Maybe.
It would be easy to rationalize this as an internal debate of to-do lists, client needs/wants, and my own driving force – easier to deflect every task, not so easy to wrestle with internal-driver issues, and what matters most. I know this, but taking care of business requires taking care of business … somewhat removed from taking care of dreams, desires, and demands to make progress on what matters most.
Letting one thing right every day is essential, but too often, a notion without hope; settling for getting one big thing done and wrestling with how to get it ‘more right’ next time.
Getting one primary thing done every day, the way I want, within the time-frame I planned, and achieving the result I want is a great goal. Most days, that’s only mind-candy.
On some of my most productive days, I just do one thing. Then the next, the next, and so on, as fast as I can.
On wiser days, I spend more time thinking through what I’m doing – working at what I’m doing, and often the day ends with more confusion than it began, but it is a better sort of disorder – a better sense of conflicting issues, a better take on what should come next.
But, at the end of the day ~ it’s really the end of the day …
p.s. – I often find pounding out the description of a problem in this way pushes me to better solutions – as this column has, so ‘thanks Mark, you made tomorrow easier’