I love getting things done.
I am known to start projects and finish them in the same day, working for hours upon hours just because I am impatient for that moment when I can see the finished product. I work fast and thoroughly. I get irritated when something hangs me up, when the internet goes slow or my software crashes or I just can’t find the chord I’m looking for. I like moving forward. I like seeing things happen.
This quality makes me good at making things happen in any circumstance. I don’t need a lot to get started and complete a project, and I don’t let things stop me. It’s how I was able to get a masters in two years even though I had a major bout of depression. It’s how I remade my college newspaper over a summer. It’s how I wrote a whole music album in a few months.
But it makes me terrible at long-term projects that move slowly. I tend to rush the resolution, forcing connections and a finished status for things that still need time. It’s ironic, really, because in art, I love tension and I think it’s underrated. I’m always looking for what I call crunchy chords, those funky moments in music that take you by surprise. But maybe it’s because in art, I can see the whole picture quickly and understand the place of tension. In my own story, it sometimes feels like I’m hanging out in dissonance never to find the resolution. I can’t see the whole picture.
For the past year, I have been in one place, a tense place that has been hard and frustrating and sometimes maddening. To all of a sudden have every door shut but one that you don’t want to walk through is difficult. To work a job you don’t like to survive drains you. It’s a vicious cycle at times. You are working to survive a life where all you do is work at a place you don’t like.
When I look back, it’s almost comical how bad my circumstances were. I got a job that required me to sit at a front desk and talk to people all day and do zero creative work in a field I cared zero about. I remember thinking, “Really, God? Could you pick a worse thing?” To top it off, the office I ended up working at was across the street from a construction zone, so as I slowly went insane from the phone ringing, I also went insane from the constant loud noise. There would be times where it would sound like someone literally had a jackhammer on the roof for hours straight. There were these blasts where, with no warning, the building would boom like a bomb went off. It was the worst.
But I look back now and see how metaphoric that was. In that season, I was in construction in my heart. It was painstaking and annoying. There were moments of explosion where the ground I knew for so long caved beneath my feet. There were other moments where things were so monotonous I wanted to scream.
Now, I look across the street and see how that construction site holds the beginnings of a building, foundations laid and structure established. The painstaking process created a sound building.
And the same is true for me. This dirty, gritty ground I’ve lived on for so long has turned into a structure before my eyes. I see how necessary destruction was, in order to make room for the best, what was meant for me.
I know I still have a ways to go, because I have finally learned to rest in tension, but to see the beginnings of resolution is so sweet. I am able to finally quit this job and move on to a place that I actually really enjoy. I don’t know what the future holds since my position at the moment is not 100% set in stone, but I do know who holds my future.
I know that when all seems lost that might be the precise moment that all is being found.
