In Lieu of Pressure

I have been sort of lost this past week. Most of my time in the past three years has been dedicated to my degree, to learning as much as I can about photography and applying those skills in my art. I am at a loss now that the bulk of that education is completed. At this point I have to put a show together, which I could do with the work I have already created, put together my final document, of which I already have five different papers/prewriting exercises to use as fodder, and complete my defense, which will be done in front of my committee during the show hanging and for which I am already preparing by doing the photography and writing the document.

The show hangs in September (I hope) and I have set a personal goal for myself to get the writing done (first draft) by the middle of August. So I have almost two full months to prep. Which is infuriating to someone like me who prefers to be busy. If I had a job (still looking, no luck), I think I would be further along in my preparation for graduation than I am now. Because now, I have all day every day to dedicate to it and it is much easier to laze around and not do anything. WHAT?!?!? Sometimes I hate my stupid brain because of how intelligent and also how lazy it is. I can convince myself (and anyone else, mind you) that I am fully capable of putting together a show, a document, and a defense without so much as a misstep in a week. I can sit down and write six thousand words in one day with decent flow, continuity, and structure. I have also gotten much better at editing and, with the help of my beautiful and brilliant husband, can tear through those six thousand words to make them more fluid, contiguous, and structured in a matter of days. Okay, so that puts me at approximately two weeks for a full doc if you consider that I will be writing in parallel with editing and polishing.

Soooo, I sit around the house, look for jobs that I want (because I am not yet at the stage where I will apply for just any job, and certainly not at the state where I will go crawling back to my old life), watch TV, clean the house, and stare at the ceiling. Literally. Sometimes I lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling.

And now SPF and I are surfing twice a week, so two days a week I think about that, stretch, stare at the six bikinis that I own and determine which one I am going to wear, make sure the towels are clean and dry, the wet suits are rinsed and ready, the boards waxed, the car full of gas, and some sort of dinner ready in the fridge. (Yesterday I made a beet and caramelized onion salad (thanks JB!) and put it in the fridge and then we grilled chicken to go with it when we got home from surfing. Tasty!)

But what I really need to do is GET MY ASS IN GEAR! But, in lieu of actual pressure for the deadline, I seem to prefer to linger in the ocean, catch up on Avatar, and play Farm Frenzy 2 on Yahoo. (You should check it out.)