Monday, April 10, 2006

This post is perfect

Let's see what it looks like when you write something just for yourself. Most of my writing in typed form is in e-mails to folks that I'm trying to convince or appease. Something good always comes out of those (after two or three revisions, 4 responses and a phone call).

In fact, in general I have been noticing that I don't tend to think about things until I know I have to talk to someone about it. The thought makes me sound and feel like I'm the ultimate in laziness and procrastination, which I'm starting to think could be pretty accurate.

Somehow I like to blame all that on being busy. But why am I busy? What am I trying to accomplish. I don't know.

I do know that I am not accomplishing much of whatever I am trying to accomplish which is... ( I thought it might come to me. nope)

The thing I'm already noticing is that I'm anticipating some sort of theoretical audience. Is that bad?

Downstairs a coworker was just drawing a bunny on a dry-erase board. The short exchange between him revealed that you have to be in a certain kind of mental-emotional place to draw a bunny, and I, sadly, am not in that place. His final remark, "I try to be in a bunny place all the time."

My response was that my asignment for the morning is to get to a "bunny place". Aside from sounding a little to self-help, twelve-step, the-glass-is-always-half-full; artificial it's a good goal. I think I need to talk to the bunny guy more often.

Or write him an e-mail.

I want to let people in on these personal thoughts. Maybe thats why most of my time is spent on e-mails or phone calls... well not phone calls. I keep those short. But I like to talk. I like to talk using my hands and I usually work out my inside thoughts when I talk. It's the best when it's unscripted or at least when I get past the script that I'd planned out in my head. The stuff that I think about when I know I'm going to have to talk to someone about something that I don't really want to talk about.

I try to anticipate what they'll say and have it all worked out before I even see them so that they don't think less of me for being such an idiot, jerk, fill-in-the-blank. That's called perfectionism and I'm trying to grow out of it. Thankfully I'm aware of the problem and try to avoid speaking to anyone on script, but I still seem to pull quotes from the script.

Sometimes those one-liners make people smile and say something encouraging about how deep I am (which oddly enough I don't self-depricatingly deny. I agree.) But deep isn't just a way to look cool. It's also a way to swim really far down until your ears fill with water and you remember you are a mammal who likes to be warm and usually dry and oh, by the way you need oxygen.

So I have to come up for air to my friends. The good friends are the ones who have stopped being impressed about my depth and just accepted it as a part of who I am. They are also the one's that ask the questions I don't expect and ask me too many to stay on the script anyway. I love/hate that, but I'm not ambivalent about it.

I've also been trying not to go back and add new thoughts to old paragraphs. I did it once up there. I need to just let this flow.

But the way I think I find myself easily going back to old thoughts and painting new layers on. Why can't I do that when I'm really painting? I try to do all that at once.

I try to present myself perfect all at once. That keeps me from being very prolific which, apart from being something cool that Ben Gibbard said in an interview I heard once, is one of those things I know I need to be whole.

So perfection is killing me and right now I'm exercising imperfection. I guess that makes this something to share with my friends.

posted by Scott # 10:00 AM

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