Wisdom from the desert

Deadlines. These terribly important, frustrating things: numbers in a box, highlighted, circled furiously so it looks like a tumbleweed or a vortex sucking away at the peace of mind, crossed out, moved, ignored, stressed over. They run our lives.

I tend to work better when someone else imposes a deadline on me. I struggle with setting them and sticking with them. I tell Scott a date, and then he keeps asking about this date and my progress towards it. I drag my feet; I make up excuses. I do everything but what I am supposed to do to have something by that deadline. I feel guilty and then a bit incompetent that I can't even stick to a simple date.  I am not an efficient worker; I realize this. Each time I try to fix that personality flaw, I find other, more interesting things to do.

Part of the difficulty is that the reward is often abstract. When others set a date for me, it means monetary compensation or penalty should I miss that date. My brain understands that. Finish this, submit time, get paid. Or don't submit, we'll take money or work from you. But when I set my own deadlines, it may only mean that I get to feel proud that I accomplished something. Yay. There is no guarantee that it means anything, really. I tend to see things much more in tangible reciprocity (as I am fully aware I am writing in abstractions). There is another flaw exposed.

That all being said, I've set a deadline of August for a project I have been working on for a while now (since that really slow spring 2013 quarter from hell). If I finish early, hurrah! I can move on to the next phase. There are so many phases of this it's exhausting, and I can only focus on one phase at a time. The next phases, though, I'm hoping to knock out by December. I want this in the bag by 2015.

Big picture stuff is scary. I imagine a scene that goes something like this: I finally make it up a mountain, believing I am close to my destination, only to peek over the ridge and see a vast, Sahara (or Dune) like desert spreading out from mountain to horizon, and I know that I have to cross that, too, and deal with all its threats and dangers. I can't just stick my head in the sand, and I have to fight off that urge or the urge to sit down and simply give up: "No, no, you guys; it's okay. You go on without me. I'll...catch up...eh, forget it."  Although, bonus, were this a Dune desert, I'll embrace the wrangle those sandworms, a la Fremen style, and come into my own. (...apologies for that momentary geek-out...)

It is one foot in front of the other, small steps one day, rest another day, running leaps that cover long stretches the next. Scott has to remind me that at least I keep moving, even if it, like the way I run, is inefficient and awkward, I am moving forward. Progress is progress, I suppose.