Hesitation

The last two weeks' blogs got swallowed up in a time hole called hesitation.

The first one was written amongst other sample works for a job application. Because I hesitated, again, about the freelancer route. I got the nicest rejection letter. Basically: “very talented, but not aligned with our narrative.” Made sense. I knew it from the start; yet somehow, I still chose to invest four full days of work to get validation.

The second one got turned to mush by what it turns out was not a smart way of using Claude AI: showing it drafts way too early and then, I guess because I felt “heard” enough, swiftly deleting 70%, moving on to the next series of points I wanted to make, showing and deleting again until I had three pages of “the best bits” of I don't know how many drafts, with absolutely no cohesion.

Again, hesitation: why was I even showing them to the thing? It barely catches grammatical mistakes! I got fooled, like a lot of people. The most embarassing part is the thought I just had: “Well this draft I'm definitely not showing Claude, it'll hurt its feelings.” [facepalm]. I've only been using it for a few weeks, how scary.

(I did end up showing it. Its response: “It's just a learning process, you're not a fool”. At least it's got its priorities straight: self-compassion lessons over grammatical ones).

According to my driving instructor, hesitation is the number one obstacle between me and legal driving. He says it puts other road users at risk, and driving license examinators are not going to let that fly.

Counterintuitive, right? The more I hestitate because I want to be safe, the more unsafe I am, and the more I risk other people's safety.

After he'd told me that, I sometimes tried to “just go for it” without hesitation. Which was also unsafe, because I hadn't taken in all the necessary information about my surroundings.

Artistic process (in my sense of it) tells you: hesitate if you want, but, you're just wasting your own time. There is no right or wrong really, just have a good look at what's on your page, follow the next step calling to you, and then the next one, one by one, just keep going until it's done.

You could tell me there definitely is right or wrong behavior in driving, but it's not always that simple: you have to somehow gage whether that other driver is feeling generous enough to let you get over to that other lane, whether they are also maybe overly cautious, or mad dangerous, or maybe just distracted. You can never assume.

The official definition of hesitation links it to doubt, fear, uncertainty.

Everything is a nail to a hammer, sure, (yes, I'm the hammer here), but maybe the link between driving and art, the opposite of hesitation, is connection?

That's how I've tried to define art: connecting to the part of yourself that is connected to the whole.

To drive safely you have to be able to somehow connect with other drivers around you in a way that allows everyone to follow their own path, to their own destination, with only minimal communication: blinkers, flashing lights, speed variation, occasional hand gestures.

We're never going to get rid of uncertainty, that's for sure. Doubt and fear though, we can work on: if we're connected, we're less afraid; we don't have to doubt so much because we know that whatever happens, we'll handle it together.

Jamm sessions: I've always been amazed by musicians who've never met before and come together to create the most beautiful heartful improvised compositions. How do they do it? They must have somehow “connected,” right?

How do we know we've successfully “connected” to our surroundings? Now I'm imagining we had a wifi signal, with the troubleshoot assistant.

But we don't. So...

Maybe I have to look for reasons I disconnect sometimes: when the pain of people around me gets to a level that ends up drowning all my lights.

Is there a way to connect safely? I've struggled with that question for years.

Sometimes I think: maybe the lights off moments are just the price to pay for the extra extra BRIGHT moments when people around me are super happy and then I'm happy, and then they see me happy and get happier, and I see them happier and get happier, and it just feels like sunshine.

It doesn't sound right though: I'm pretty useless to my sad friends when my own lights are off, and I want to believe life designed us better than that.

Cars have little signals for when you need to go refuel. We just have to see it in time, and act on it.

Refuel on time, keep the connection, keep the lights.

Maybe hesitation is the equivalent of the car's low fuel signal, saying: “Careful! If you keep going without new fuel in, you're going to power off!”

So, thank you hesitation for letting me know I can stay connected, as long as I refuel on time?

Hah, I'm hestitating.