in the blink of a hummingbirds eye the only deadline on my radar this year is approaching in a few days. I have been 80% ready for it for a couple of months but here I am on the last days realizing some bits of information are missing. They are not on the external hard drive, not on any of the little memory clip things lying about, not copied to my tablet, and most certainly not in the form of a paper copy which would be my most comfortably secure format. So, I am about to begin the endeavour of computer tech setting up the old tower to see if there remains the pieces of history I do not reliably remember. There was a skit with Jimmy Fallon on SNL that was about the obnoxious computer tech coming to ‘assist’ the hapless office person always after a few attempts at exasperated  directions saying, MOVE, sitting down and doing it himself. I ask you, where is Jimmy Fallon when you need him?

I understand many people store lots of things on clouds which I cannot wrap my mind around. It is more the image of cartoon angels keeping tabs on boxes of unwanted stuff cluttering up the atmosphere I imagine when I consider the possibility. Angels that might have a mischievous persona as they nudge my box of data through an airy hole and see it drop like a stone into the ocean never to be retrieved.  This unwrapping the plastic off of the defunct computer tower that has been sitting in the inclimate attic for a year seems much more reliable. Kidding aside, I think I need things I can hold in my hands to feel as though I have some pittance  of control.

I feel overwhelmed.

I will do this task, though its’ primary meaning will be in the form of keeping a commitment made for myself. It is important as a completion far more than in its outcome. I think for artists of any kind that is a worthwhile consideration. The way we approach deadlines, or juries, or proposals… There is the part you control. That is in the creating work, submitting work, following the guidelines of getting stuff to where you would like to see it go.  Beyond that it becomes quite subjective. For me the stopping place, is the part I can control. That is the end zone, the thing that comes next whether that is what I hoped for or the equally possible, not this time, that is in the letting go.

Today is about wires and words, packaging and release, tomorrow is my own again. I wonder how it is possible, in a year of living quietly, for one deadline to so weightily tip the scale. It is in the blink of a hummingbirds eye, here and gone, to come again, to exist only in a flash. Release.