Plodding

Plodding is my arch nemesis.

It’s hard for a fast thinker like me, but I know it’s exactly what needs to be done.

A friend once said, you're like a racing car - when you go, you really go, but when you don't, it's dead stop. 

Those days are over now because they are not sustainable. Those does saw me burn bright,  then burn out. Sounds dramatic but it was more dreadful than fun.

Now, living and working sustainably looks like plodding. 

Because it’s in the plodding that structure forms, that things are created. 

In my case, it’s plodding to the computer and creating again, and again. 

It’s playing around with different materials to print on and then waiting and plodding on with something else while those prints get delivered. 

Plodding is when the works arrive from the printer, seeing what they look like, seeing if they were successful and working out what to do next - how to market them, to sell them, to build an awareness around the soft edges studio brand.

Plodding is going to the gym, getting tired, getting sore, resting, then going back again. 

Plodding is the everyday things one repeats (swap out the word consistency for plodding?)

Plodding is teaching and learning.

Plodding is waiting for the email reply.

While one is plodding, one can’t see the accumulated effects of the plod - trees for the woods, per se. It requires stepping across to another project to see what’s been created in the other. Or it requires time to pass, and distance to be formed. 

Then, suddenly, you look down at the garden, for example, and there is a huge overgrowth of weeds where there wasn't before. Or, for a more salacious example, the story of a scandal is not a story until the villain has accumulated millions from scams over multiple years.

Plodding is a place where there’s no instant gratification. It’s the opposite of the internet. On the net, the content delivered may be a product of a plod but the actual internet itself is the opposite (a dose of reality TV gives me that instant packaged-up, polished good with zero plod on my behalf).That's why we reach for our phones. We reach for things on the net - instant - not plodding.

All this to say, in this little musing, I find plodding challenging. I find it the opposite of exciting. But, when I experience the outcome of plodding; the artwork, the long awaited conversation, the flower blooming in the garden, I’m reminded of how worthwhile it is to work this way (and not be exhausted at the finish line). 

Till next week,

Rachel