Getting Small

The problem with goals and projects is getting them finished. I am great with beginnings, but endings are harder. I have a new vision before the old one is over, and still-necessary tasks loom at me large and dark, guilting me, filling up my calendar with to-do lists, causing a rash! Interestingly, getting older has not changed this.

When I am in this state of nitty gritty, when I must focus and refocus on the end of a project in order to finish it, I am small. My peripheral vision narrows to nothing and I do not dream. I barely talk to myself. I rely on ritual to get me from one place where I need to be to another where I follow a different thread, and I spend a great deal of energy and watchfulness keeping my head down. It is a constant correction, to wrestle my vision back to the task, restraining it, not letting it fly off toward the vibration of some new and intoxicating thought.  In this condition, any vibration will do as I am living completely without captivation, and the rush of creativity I crave must be diligently ignored. I am bored and boring and shallow, while I try to concentrate on my feet. It must be done.  Feet move me forward, one step at a time. And this too shall, with diligence, become at last a shining artifact of the past.

The thing is, each time I forget that I have been here before, in this nitty gritty place, and that I devised a prescription long ago.  It is the way of time that we forget between, as dreams are real so are thoughts. Between mitigates the memory. Each time it is like I have to think it all through again, not remembering I could look in my diaries, not remembering the previous sartoris, forgetting I know what will help me. 

Then the light comes on, and I feel a joy and relief that I have already considered the situation, that I know what will see me through to the end. And a little proud of myself that this time I remembered before the long restriction is over, instead of only after it has ended. Progress (perhaps longevity?). I  have a flat spot on my forehead – again.

This blasted attention to final details, the details that get the project over the hill, is a physical thing - and it takes physical help.  My remembered prescription for joy in these lowland marshes is MUSIC.  Stick it in my ears, blow it off the walls, surround myself as much as I can. And watch me get small:)