CMAT // Running/Planning
Post by Misha //
I’m currently waiting on some big news, and I don’t know if it will come tomorrow or next week or in three months (or never!). Like most news, it could either be good or not so good. It could change the trajectory of my career or it could end up not meaning much.
What I should be doing is putting it out of my head until I know more. There’s nothing I can do to make things go one way or another. What I am actually doing is compulsively refreshing my email feed every time I think about it, which is approximately every twelve to twenty minutes.
I feel a bit like a kid, having to find ways to trick myself into not thinking about it. I listen to a podcast about the news. I remind myself that there are actually important things happening. I read an article about the scientists who found signs of life on another planet. I go for a walk without my phone. I work on getting a short story ready to send out so that there will then be more things that I’m waiting to find out about and the all-consuming importance of this one will therefore (the theory goes) be lessened. I eat these Japanese grape gummies that I’ve become obsessed with that give me a stomachache basically as soon as they touch my lips. I make my way through a collection of Nabokov’s short stories. I bake sourdough bread. I go pick slugs out of my garden before they eat the tender seedlings I’ve planted. I listen to music and try to write about it but instead write about the thing I’m trying to avoid thinking about.
All of these activities have ceased to be ways to spend my time. They are instead tactical strategies to stretch out the intervals of minutes and hours in between checking my email.
Also, my phone has for some reason stopped notifying me of new emails. I’m not sure if this makes things better or worse, in terms of the compulsivity, but I’ve avoided troubleshooting the issue in case fixing it makes me more anxious. There’s something to be said for being able to choose when I give over to my obsessiveness. The idea that the notification could just be there at any moment, waiting for me when I come in from de-slugging the garden or buying more grape gummies or putting the bread in the oven – it’s entirely too much.
Anyway, I’m very excited for this album to come out – even if it is another thing to wait for.
Preorder CMAT’s new album, Euro-Country, here.