Friday, 2nd September 2022
Douglas Adams’ famous quote, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by” gives very little comfort in the days leading up to a deadline. If you don’t make the target, it gives even less comfort in the days that follow. Completing a piece of work is incredibly satisfying, but grappling with trying to finish a piece of work which just doesn’t seem to be coming together, while the clock ticks over the point that it should have been ready entails a special kind of personal torture.
Now is the time to consider your failures: you failed to make good on your promise to deliver something within a certain timeframe; you failed to live like a motivational poster and overcome your difficulties in order to turn in your work; you failed to overcome the awful self-doubt which, despite years of therapy, still rips through you like a cannonball through a sail-cloth; you failed to show the world that you are the best version of yourself and that anyone who ever doubted you, insulted you or rejected you was clearly in the wrong.
Gosh, how did that thought process capsize so easily. How quickly you let your thoughts whirlpool when you meet setbacks. Deep down, perhaps you believe that the worst things anyone has ever thought about you are true.
You ask yourself:
If I’m unable to function when my thoughts spiral to these deep places, does that make a shallow person?
Down in the murky bottom of your consciousness, where you can almost imagine that you’re able to make out your unconscious fears and desires, everything is held by impenetrable glass walls, which defy reason by becoming less transparent the more you look at them. There’s the job you didn’t get; there’s the competition you didn’t win; there’s the criticism you never understood; there’s the first date which never led to a second; there’s the person who hurts you still, despite all this time that’s gone by. But they all fade away back into the darkness as soon as you see them.
Tight deadlines force you to swim in deep waters, but it’s not just deadlines, creative work in general can ask this of you. How can you swim in these waters, amongst the asphyxiating rogues gallery of your psychic life, and come out victorious?
Sometimes, you have to give up and rise back to the surface. Do you feel defeated? You can hear the commentary of the imaginary spectators, who simply don’t see you as someone who’s up to the task. You’re worried that they might be right. It’s hard to live like the obsessed hero who continues on the correct path despite the cynical voices pushing her back when you identify with the cynical voices and not with the hero. The best you can do is find a way continue in the shallow water for now, while you plan for your next excursion into the paralysing depths below.
At least at the surface you can breathe. Let’s acknowledge something now: it is within your power to finish the work which is still unfinished, you can undertake the small tasks which will carry you at least somewhat towards your goal and you will never regret having made progress, even if the progress is only limited. For now, we must simply swim on, taking whichever route seems possible. The goal remains in sight.
James Waide 