I thrive on change. I count on change to create the new. I love the new. Puer aeternus, baby. I can even deal with “bad” change – because if you’re counting on change, it means the current badness won’t last long.
But what slows me down is the unresolved. Not ambiguity, something with which I’m comfortable, but the unresolved. Something specific, with a tension – creative or otherwise – that will go one of two ways, but not just yet. That is killer distracting.
How do I deal with it? A good personal example is when, in June of 1986, my partners and I decided to move our business from Syracuse NY to Dallas TX in September (for a lot of 20-20 hindsight stupid reasons). I was young, and my girlfriend was younger, and I told her that we should probably break up right away, so that we didn’t get any closer and make the autumn separation more difficult. How dumb was that, huh? Talk about limiting your outcomes. In the end, she dropped out of school to move with me. (How dumb was that, heh?) This caused her dad to not speak to her while we were together. (More dumbness, natch.) I was privileging “difficult change now” over “unresolved issue later.”
It’s hard to say why I’m so comfortable with generalized ambiguity, but grounded by unresolved specificity. Worth pondering. But for now, back to work.
Update, two hours later: Introspection is a major buzz-kill for productivity. I should write this stuff at night.
January 19, 2006