27 lines
2 KiB
Plaintext
27 lines
2 KiB
Plaintext
<p>It shouldn’t surprise me because it always happens this way, but somehow it <em>does</em>
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surprise me, every time. I have recently finished a piece of work which had
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consumed almost all of my time and focus at work for a number of weeks. There
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was a fixed deadline and it was a substantial and complex piece of work. For
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these reasons, it was also a bit stressful, but that’s the way work is from time
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to time. What surprised me (and shouldn’t have done) is the way I felt after I
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had finished it.</p>
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<p>I was (of course) relieved and pleased to have completed it by the deadline.
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It felt like a small but troublesome burden had been lifted from my shoulders.
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After I had pressed the big ‘Submit’ button, I went for a walk, and was
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astounded that my mind was suddenly bubbling over with ideas, with links I
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hadn’t noticed before between this thing and those things, with interesting
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phrases, metaphors and similies. I was <em>noticing</em> things in the world again,
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asking questions and thinking about how to answer them. My mind felt playful and
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light and expansive.</p>
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<p>What I need to remember is that it is always like this. Deadlines are a fact of
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life and I just have to deal with them when they come up, but the pressure they
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impose is temporarily disastrous for my creativity. This means that I need to
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have solved any problems relating to the task which require creative thought
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long before the suffocating fog of the deadline descends. It’s also why I
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sometimes go quiet on this blog for weeks at a time. It’s not that I don’t have
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time to write here, but more that I don’t have the mental space to play around
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with ideas. Everything feels suppressed and heavy. Once the deadline is over, I
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feel as if a door or window has been thrown open and all the sights and sounds
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and scents of the outdoors come flooding in again.</p>
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<p>I’m writing this as a reminder to future me that this is the way my brain works,
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and I need to plan better for the pre-deadline and post-deadline effects.</p> |