Outside, the sky cracks open, my heart continues to pound out my chest. The rain makes my vision-impairing dry eyes feel all the more dispassionate. The absurd, worse-than-winter chill of AC on summer sweat only heightens the sense of dreadful anxiety playing skrillex with my nerves.
Folks, I'm not doing great.
A week of exhaustion following a week of sleeplessness tends to have that effect, true. Still, I find comfort in the lightning. It gets me.
I'm by no means bipolar. I think the manic-esque productivity spikes surrounded by a fluffy down of downward spiral fit more of a pattern indicating that my soul-crushing depression can be temporarily blockaded by the rupturous nature of "project pressure".
Now, what is project pressure you, doubtlessly, wonder?
Well, you glorious phalanx of haloed chickadees, here's what I mean...I guess, in list form.
- Behold: A NEW IDEA.
- So I take that poor hatchling of an idea and I throw it against the wall with increasing severity until I'm no long able to catch a hold of its return momentum.
- At which point it slams into my person so hard that one of us starts bleeding.
- And likely crying.
- The blood and tears, as they're apt to do, initiate SWEAT LEVEL MIDNIGHT.
- All the planning I should do is instead taken up with procrastination and reworking of the most tangential aspects of the process until...
- I take a blindfolded, backwards, over-the-shoulder, half court shot at a mental calendar toward what I hope is a realistic schedule and deadline for completion.
- I miss that shot, not entirely because I still have no real hold on what the project itself actually entails.
- Enter: Random burst of responsible and well-thought out, albeit far too detailed laying out of everything I could possibly hope and dream for the perfect, best case scenario result of the tireless hard work I'm definitely going to put into this, for sure, oh yeah, of course...right...
- A week of being too scared of every possible worst case scenario to even start (this can sometimes last for several weeks/years).
- Several false starts later...
- Drown in a deluge of creative energy and inspiration while I'm trying to focus on something else entirely (such as driving or reading or talking/listening to other people or cleaning...often cleaning)
- Enter a mad panic mode of slamming down as much of that spark as I can snatch from the aether before it disappears forever like that brilliant dream I just woke from or that pasta sauce I made five years ago and still haven't matched...
- Lose track of all of that while I follow the "meep-meeps" of some quirky, shiny, and temporarily fascinating random intrusive figment
- Capture genius in a bottle
- Drop the bottle
- Scoop up what little I can of the genius before it gets too diluted by my salty, salty tears
- Realize the previously set deadline came and went two weeks ago
- Fall into a creative energy pain coma funk for a few days/weeks/lifetimes
- JUST DO IT!
- Realize I can't JUST DO all of IT in one night
- Get done enough of it that I have something to work off of
- Keep going
- Keep....going
- keep....go...ing
- Ah, I'm almost done
- New deadline set!
- All this progress has completely changed my perspective on the project's direction, so I'm gonna close my eyes, hang a sharp left, and just drive till the laws of motion become a bit less abstract
- I should probably eat something...or sleep...or shower....NAH!
- This new direction has brought up several issues with previous work
- Go back and change things
- But now I realize how discordant and uneven this mess has become
- Blood sugar reaches critical low
- Gotta keep micro-editing
- Too exhausted/hungry/bleary-eyed
- Finally eat/sleep/shower/take medication/move
- In the morning/whenever I next get around to it
- Everything that was once bright, shiny, and genius is now AWFUL!
- This is the worst thing I or anyone in the history of ever has ever made
- EVER
- But Maybe NOT!?!!?!!!???!!!
- Marathon Maker: ACTIVATE!
- Slide into home.
- Face full of dirt. So much so I can't really tell what good art even is anymore.
- Give up on perfection.
- FINISH!!!
- Share and enjoy for, at most, a few hours.
- Fall into the deepest, darkest, dankest, deadliest divot of all time.
- I will never get another good idea again.
- Behold: A NEW IDEA.
And that's how it's done.
By the by, here's a lyric video for a song of mine. Hope ya like it (especially since you now know exactly how it was made).
Thanks for reading,
Odist
