The End of Deadlines

"I love deadlines and the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams

"Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out." - Michael Burke

I love deadlines and the whooshing sound they make, but I don't let them fly by. When a paper is due, at the last moment, something inside me takes over and suddenly, I spring into action.  The reading and the lectures begin to coalesce into something like an idea.  I write, stop and think, read, check out some other sources, write some more, think some more, etc. until a ten or twenty page paper begins to take shape, 3,000 or 5,000 words emerge out of my fingertips.  As the clock ticks away and the deadline nears, I nervously watch the word count approach the goal.

I wrote my last paper a few days ago and attended my last class yesterday.  I suddenly find myself without deadlines.  Of course the laundry needs to be done, the house cleaned, food cooked, and the baby fed.  All of those have to be done eventually.  But I am never frantically washing dishes, watching the clock on the wall as it approaches midnight.  And when the dishes are done, they are the same old dishes.  Nothing is created.  Nothing new emerges out of seemingly random pieces that were smashed together under pressure.

The whole process feels like that split second in baseball when you see the ball come off the bat and head in a line drive straight toward you.  You don't stop to contemplate why the ball is heading towards you, the socially appropriate response to the ball, or what the ball may be thinking about you.  You just act.  Long before your head has figured out what to do, you throw up your glove in front of your face and catch that ball.

I am going to miss the pressure of a deadline, the whooshing sound it makes as it almost flies by, and the thrill of sticking out my mitt at the last minute and catching it.