Tuesday, July 14, 2009

I remember thinking on the Fourth of July how brutally busy this month would be, and as one neighborhood firework exploded after the next–drumbeats heralding inevitability, in a way–a sinking feeling grew, slick and unsettling, until I wanted nothing more than the Gregorian calendar to give me a pass and skip straight to August. But the only way this wish will come true, apparently, is if I do it the old-fashioned way and grind it out for another 17 days.

It’s easy enough to parcel out your routine: health, social life, family, work, and so forth. I tend to like having one of these areas on the fritz at any given time. The friction keeps you sharp, I believe, and besides, it’s unrealistic to expect everything to happen smoothly all the time. Now, when two or more of these pieces explode, so goes the theory, the stress begins to gather. Settle. Coagulate.

It feels like I’m neck-deep in the storm right now. I hesitate to use the word “burnout” because it strikes me as weak, a conceit tinged with self-pity and an overwhelming lack of motion. There’s this sense of wallowing. Waiting. And I’m well past it. Instead, I’m turning to this framework of skill acquisition again–namely, what can I gain from this situation? Is there knowledge about how to do something, ready for the taking?

Absolutely. Here’s what I’m currently learning: how to approach an endless swirl of tasks and commodify the fucker. It’s this idea of nailing down a mass of half-finished things, regarding it coldly, impersonally, and then breaking it into palatable pieces. Units of Done, as it were. 17 days. A mere half-dozen posts from now, and I’ll be on the other side.