Where Does the Time Go

So, about a year ago, the company I was working for had an employee art fair. It was a neat idea, although they only gave about 20 days between the announcement and when everything would be put on display. I knew it wasn't enough time for me to make something new, but it had inspired me to take a couple things that had been on my mind then and put them into a 3D scene. At the time, I figured it would take two, maybe three months to make it.

After about four months of working on it, it became fairly apparent that I had overestimated my ability, and probably underestimated the complexity of what I was trying to do. There were quite a few times I thought about writing something here, and a few times I even started to, but I kept telling myself that I decided to do this other project and I wanted to finish it, or at least have something to show for it, before getting back to writing.

I started over a couple times as it wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to, and I've basically put it aside for now. I've only completed about 20% of what I had originally pictured, and even what I do have I'm not that happy with, it has some flaws and less detail then what I would like it to have, but it's something.

Full image

A few months ago I realized that I had been making a few mistakes. One I've mentioned a few times here, that unhappiness can be defined as the distance between the reality that you believe, and the reality that is. I think this actually applies in a couple ways.

The first being my estimate of how long this project would take me, and even though I was somewhat aware of it fairly early in the process, it was still a difficult one to let go of. There was a part of me that thought I might just whip together everything that was missing in a burst of inspiration. Those unreasonable expectations made the project less enjoyable, more frustrating, and that frustration made the art project more like a chore then something I wanted to do, and my progress was that much slower for it.

The second mistake, or mistaken perception I had, I think was much worse. It's an insidious viewpoint, one I've seen other people take, with what I would describe as tragic consequences. Luckily, I held this viewpoint with something fairly minor, but I'm still pretty disappointed with myself that I fell into it. I'm not really sure what the best way to describe it is, I suppose we can call it the fear of "wasted time". That was what kept bringing me back to working on that picture, the thought that I just need to have something to show for the time I had spent working on it. That if I didn't have anything, that time I spent on it would have been wasted. I was too focused on getting results to appreciate what I was learning along the way. I could have stopped working on it before I had anything completed, and I still would have learned something. I still would have had that experience, that was bringing my ability closer to what I had originally overestimated it to be already. Instead though I was focused on what it could be, what I thought it should be, and anything less was failure.

Those two perceptions combined were pretty self defeating. Even if I had gotten the entire scene close to what I had first pictured, if it would have taken me three years, then at that point all I would have seen was something much less then what it should have been after three years of work. In some sense I do look at it that way, I'm not happy with the results I do have. It's a perception that's hard to let go of.

I find it somewhat disconcerting that I fell into that trap, as it was one I was already aware. I know I'm not perfect, but I do like to think that foreknowledge of these kinds of things would let me see them coming. I said I've seen people make this mistake with what I would call tragic consequences. That story is actually how I became aware of this point of view originally. When I was living with Jim & Cheryl I had a friend who was in an abusive marriage. I think she opened up to me about it more than with other people, because in some way I understood that what she needed most was some one who would listen, without telling her that she should leave him, that she was making a mistake. She already had those people in her life, who were always disapproving. Instead, I listened to it all, the good and the bad. I think she just needed someone to know, to understand, and I tried to be that person. There's more to it of course, but that's a whole other story. However, one time I did ask her, why hadn't she left him? Her first response was to say, "But, we've been together for eight years." It took me a while to realize the implications of that statement.

That wasn't the only reason she stayed of course, but I thought it was telling that it was the first thing she said. That marriage was eight years of her life that she didn't want to see as a failure, as wasted time. And that only becomes a tighter trap as time goes on, how can it get any easier when it's ten years, twenty? I don't believe that view point of wasted time can apply to the past, I don't think there's anything we can do today, that will change yesterday from meaningful to meaningless. But when that becomes the only reason left, when the fear of having wasted time already past is the only thing tying us to a situation that will never be what we want it to, perhaps we can waste that moment, and all the one's that follow. That would be tragic indeed.