#293: Puttering and Practice

“Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.” — Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

It’s been hard to write recently. I think it may be as simple as having gotten into a routine and omitting dedicated time to write. Getting to this point — fingers on the keys, mind directed to one singular focus and thread of thought — involved quite an elaborate dance: getting fully dressed, finding my keyboard, ignoring the half-done household chore I abandoned last night for sleep, and turning on the kettle for coffee. I bet it’ll be ready halfway through one of these upcoming sentences. But wait — come back, mind! — I’m now HERE to write. It’s happening. And it almost feels like I’ve been in this moment for hours and couldn’t be asked to do anything else, ever again. I’ve gone from doing a puttering polka into an aimed adagio.

I’ve been doing this dance at least since my first time having to intentionally STOP and sit down to memorize lines for my high school play. Back then it would been true procrastination — wanting to needlessly put it off to tomorrow. Now, living in a house, having two kids, it takes on the mask of chores or house projects that MUST be done before anything else. I’ve trained myself to look outside for the cues of what needs to be done — checking-in with my surroundings to make sure everything is being handled and can take care of itself for a while. I’m always setting myself up so I won’t be interrupted, but never actually getting around to doing the thing.

I heard of a study on motor patterns in mice, where they would have to press a lever to get a food pellet. It was observed that they would slowly add more and more small, extraneous movements before the act of pressing the lever; in the way pitchers do before throwing a baseball. Is my “disco of delay” any different? How did I become so well rehearsed in wandering around the house, looking for anything else to do other than my art? (Fortunately, I understand it’s possible to un-train them. In this, may I be as simple as a mouse.)

Perhaps this is part of my process of being human — practicing again and again to call my mind back to here and now… to where I am, and what I am doing. Learning, and forgetting, and remembering. It does sound a lot like a dance.