Bear with me a minute
time is relative, my brother
Hey White Rabbits,
Today I had the strangest thought. It makes no sense at all to feel behind the 8-ball (sorry for anyone who doesn’t play pool, but also what an odd expression, since I’ve always used it to mean feeling overwhelmed and that I face an impossible task because of falling behind—but I think it probably sources from being in an untenable situation. Let’s check. Yep. It doesn’t mean having fallen behind. Live and learn.)
Oh, speaking of live and learn: the phrase is Sneak PEEK. You’re welcome.
Let me start over. Today I had the strangest thought. It makes no sense to feel pressure from a lack of time when there is more than 24 hours of time before your deadline. The evolutionarily correct thing to do when under deadline is to have laser focus and superhuman abilities, blocking out all other events and needs until the work is done. But that’s not what most humans do. Most humans, when faced with a deadline that is currently still achievable, freeze up. We dally. We do our laundry in a panic instead of writing the last bit of that one grant due at the end of the week.
Mind you, in my case, the grant will be written—but it is truly strange to me (and very illogical on the face of it) that we balk at external pressure. What possible evolutionary gain can there be from NOT finishing things that we clearly need to do? Aesop wrote the ants and the grasshopper to illustrate the dangers of procrastination. And yet, too much time for me causes far too much pressure (like for me this week: I have just launched the Pen Parentis Fellowship for New Writers, and the Book-to-Film Literary Salon is on Tuesday, and the AWP conference National Writer Parent Meetup is in two weeks and the Bookfair Table needs signage and things with QR codes, and the website needs updating, and of course the grants won’t write themselves. Plus there are a LOT of writing deadlines for various contests and journals this month, mostly on March 15th.) These deadlines are all soon but not immediate. They are achievable if I focus and work.
So why have I found myself increasingly finishing each day with my shoulders aching from stress? This is what I don’t understand: I have had decades to learn and absorb that procrastination is both unhealthy and ultimately less fun than just getting the tasks out of the way and then kicking up my feet to bad Netflix and a sack of Cheetos without guilt (okay, only the guilt of orange-colored MSG and corporate amounts of NaCl) — I know this. I have experienced the far-greater-pleasure of taking a half day off AFTER achieving my goals. It feels better. It is healthier. I prefer it.
So why on earth do I still find myself stressed long before the deadline hits, doing other things because I can’t seem to get motivated?
(I suspect it is all somehow linked to fear. Shoulders aching and back of the head/nape of the neck being tense are usually a fear response.)
Writing News:
Watch me interview four authors about bringing their books to film and/or streamers. It should be a terrific conversation. Invite your friends - this one is open to anyone, but you do need to RSVP. Event is Online Tuesday March 11th and the authors are huge. More info here. (this is the March Pen Parentis Literary Salon - the authors are all parents; the audience doesn’t have to be)
This week was full of good shows: I saw the new Cirque (Luzia) on Wednesday during the Monsoons - which was fantastically meta because there was a gigantic waterfall on stage as well.
I also had the great fortune to see DAKAR 2000 at Manhattan Theater Club. It wasn’t at all the terrorism-driven plot I had expected. Instead it was a strangely thoughtful two-person play about the disappointment of not knowing how to be a good person, but desperately wanting to matter. It was also a philosophical rumination about how it feels to be “good at lying”. In general, this play was very much about the nature of good, trust, and ultimately fear of irrelevance.
The last thing I saw was a Lithuanian-language film at Scandinavia House. The director was present and the audience was eager. The film has been selling out theaters in Lithuania despite its hefty length (nearly three hours) and its very slow art-house development. The key to its popularity is that the film, set in the small northern town of Šiauliai (“the Manchester of Lithuania”) in post-Soviet 1990s was filmed using a lot of found footage from the actual time period and the editing is seamless - it is impossible to realize where the documentary ends and the acting begins.
Random Final Thought:
Why is there no good word for this sort of a gigantic seafood display on ice? It’s not a Seafood Tower if it’s not arranged as a tower. It’s not a buffet or an ice sculpture, really. So what is it called?
PS: Next week’s newsletter may be late or very short. My son and I are driving to Canada for the weekend (10 hours each way) because a very young friend of ours is unexpectedly in hospital. Sometimes, when there’s truly nothing you can do about an awful situation, the only thing to do is to make a grand if useless gesture of solidarity and hope that the love you’re sending out will add to the general energy and help gestate a miracle.