Scatterbot

I dunno why. Sounds about right. Scattering parts of me hither and thither. My apartment reflects that disarray most of the time. And as I’ve written, the disparate parts of me are scattered. And my thesis, scattered.

I mention it today, as one of my action items is to print the last 9 pages that I’ve written and consolidate them into the whole. This isn’t like tacking them on to the end, that’s not the way my thesis is written – not linearly. It is more like a collage, and I have to figure out what makes these disparate pieces a whole.

As you can imagine, this is as - if not more - metaphorical as it is literal. And I’ve been stalling. Not long, just a few days, but long enough to notice. I went to the local library to print out the 9 pages, and a woman was on the computer, so I waited about 5 minutes, and left. And, it’ll be time for me to do that again today – but, uh, stay this time, and print them out.

It’s like … gluing an old vase back together. You’ve hung on to the pieces because you couldn’t bare to chuck them; and so you’ve lost some of the little bits that used to create the whole. But I notice the missingness of the vase.

I’ve asked a girlfriend of mine from school to take a look at it once it’s in order, and to read it with an editing, writerly eye. She’s agreed, and I feel safe and comfortable showing the work to her – she’s been in workshops with me, and I trust her eye on my work – she gets it. Plus I respect and love her writing, which is helpful in a partnership of this sort. So, I’m supposed to get something – by my own deadline – to her by Friday. The end of Spring Break – which, doesn’t look much different to me than any other week, except I’m not on campus two days this week.

The other thing I have to unscatter for tomorrow are my numbers – I meet with someone weekly to talk through financial clarity and do some work, and it’s my self-imposed deadline to load all my numbers into my spreadsheet before I meet with her – as when I was only doing it monthly, it felt too vague, like I really didn’t know what I had to spend or had spent in the categories I’ve designated.

I also have an “action partner” now. It was suggested to me last week that I get an “art action partner,” but as I was talking with my friend last night, we agreed, they’re pretty much the same thing in our lives. So, I have someone who I’m emailing now daily the tasks I’ll do today – like the printing and the numbers – and then, theoretically, I’ll email her tonight to let her know what I’ve done.

We’ll see how it goes. We’re playing the structure of it loosely, but I know I need a daily list at the moment. My fear is causing my lack of structure to dissolve into procrastination and paralyzation. (The three “P”s, I’ve heard are: Perfectionism, Procrastination, Paralyzation.) So I’m trying to head the cycle off at the pass by creating a structure where babysteps are acknowledged and doable… and accountable.

It is by baby steps that I won’t fuck it up, basically. Inaction has the same result for me as too much or big action – taking an outsized step, and falling, and then feeling like See, I can’t do it. When in reality, it just was an outsized step for where I am in my development, and I’d set myself up to fail.

I’m looking forward to some of this structure, because I feel like by standing on the foundation of it, I feel supported, and like I’m taking estimable acts.

Scatterbot, powering down. Gathering time, commence.