Avoid it like the plague...

Let’s talk some about TASK AVOIDANCE in the Plague Time.

As we make our way through the Captivity, I’ve seen more and more people — on Twitter and Facebook — joke about not getting things done when clearly they have more time and space to get those things done. It’s like the nation (and some of the rest of the planet) is stuck in some kind of interstellar TASK AVOIDANCE timeloop.

Why this apparent contradiction? Why would people avoid getting things done when suddenly they have time to do them? I can tell you what’s going on in my brain, and I suspect it’s going on in others’ brains as well.

Remember our central cycle of Precepts:

We make a stab at our project, then step back and look it over, then come back and tweak it. That tweak becomes an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT itself, which then requires evaluation and tweaking, etc., etc.

We do this as many times as it takes before we’re satisfied with our project — or we decide the whole thing was misbegotten in the first place and we should never have started it, much less wasted that much time on it because IT’S NEVER GOING TO WORK NEVER NEVER NEVER.

But I digress.

As Lichtenbergians, we have learned to manage this process by having multiple versions of this cycle going on at one time: we avoid working on the symphony by working on the GALAXY Project, which we avoid working on by looking at the lizard decoration, which we avoid by…

Etc., etc.

Here’s the kink in that plan: See the exit ramp in the cycle? ABANDONMENT. That’s what scares us more than anything: finishing the THING THAT IS NOT. When the project is done, we have no defense. It’s no longer part of us, just like buds on a hydra — it may have grown from us, but once it’s done, we have to acknowledge its separateness from us. It’s gone, and we have to turn our attention to the next bud.

Asexual reproduction in hydra — a metaphor for ABANDONMENT

I have a very real fear that if I finish ALL THE THINGS, I will not have anything to do. I will face a dreary existence with nothing to look forward to but doomscrolling on Twitter or binge-watching dreadful crap like… well, I won’t name it, but trust me there is at least one TV series that should never have been made that I have been forced to watch and that’s why I haven’t finished the symphony and you can’t prove that’s not true.

This is a silly fear, of course, because the truth is worse — if I finish these projects, I will have to work on things that I am afraid to work on.

Thus, if I were to finish…

• the GALAXY Project

• the lizard decoration

• the fence art project

… I would be faced with…

• Lichtenbergianism for Kids

• Ten Little Waltzes

• a YouTube video to promo Lichtenbergianism that I got myself into by challenging Andrew Santella to step up our self-promotion strategies

Those are some pretty big polyps.

Already, as I look over my to-do list, I’m getting close to this situation now. Fortunately for me, none of my current projects can be finished any time soon, so I can pretend I do not hear the dull tread of Ten Little Waltzes outside my door.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on out there as people start to realize that — in addition to isolation and FOMO and the existential fear of disease — they feel as if they’re going to be left with nothing to do or, more terrifyingly, actually have to give in to their biggest dreams/fears.

And here we are, with probably another year to go in Captivity. Oy.

I’ve told you my fears; what are yours? (Or is none of this the case with you?)