Did it. Missed the Saturday Quiet Day - but that was weather related. I simply do not drive in freezing weather, and the car's back end slipped and fishtailed on Friday evening when I was coming home, so I didn't drive on Saturday. But I did get my papers handed in, I have attended my last class for the quarter, and I am all done with school until January. I'm happy, I think. I'm kind of numb. I'll take today to re-normalize a bit - rest - watch a movie, probably. It's not like the schedule calms down much - it's just that school work is over. I'm at the top of the huge cave again, and it's cold out here, and the wind is blowing, and it's good to be out. Call off the search team. I made it out.And note to self: the thing a person buys by completing tasks as soon as the tasks appear is this: peace of mind. Many things conspired to force my last week of the quarter to be a real squeeze, and that's simply the way it fell out this time. But still - putting things off in order to build a momentum and an energetic push has very limited power in it. The common claim, "I work better under pressure" is true, but it doesn't answer the whole issue. Better than what? I now suspect that the desire to have the "pressure" is actually the desire to avoid awareness of the whole task. Pressure forces us to focus on only one piece at a time. Maybe it's better to learn to ride a wave than to hold one's nose and tumble ashore inside of it.
(yikes. even my metaphor maker is tired out.)
3 comments:
Well, congratulations. I love your reflections on the wisdom of putting off tasks. The idea of wanting pressure as a way to avoid awareness of a given task strikes me as all too true. And then, there is the loss of perspective that comes when you have to do a ton of stuff in a crunch -- one tends to think one's finished product is better than it is. At least in my experience.
Good point, Eva! I think you're right. If feel like we "have to" hurry (because we have put things off), then we really do "have to" release a product we haven't had time to evaluate.
I got most of my final essay done on Saturday, and then when I looked at it on Monday (when it was due), planning to just tweak it a bit here and there, I found that it needed to be redone -- a lot of it was garbage. My Interdisciplinary Studies instructor is "a fan of drafts," he told us. Me too - more than ever, now.
mleh.
Still brain dead, apparently. That should read:
"If WE feel like we ..." and not "If feel."
ugh.
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