onlytheantscansaveusnow

Sorry for The Big Gap. I think. 

This is not The First Big Gap and I’m certain it will not be The Last Big Gap. I don’t know exactly why they happen, but they are frustrating. 

Truthfully, I have struggled with motivation to work/study/make on my own since I was about 16 (astute readers will notice this is the age one is first properly ‘examined’). Even back then, I would put off revising for GCSEs, and in many cases barely ‘revised’ properly at all. I was lucky to have been smart enough, and to have gone to a good enough school, so that I was able to get good grades without even trying. Sometimes I feel like this ‘got away with it’ mentality is part of what has negatively affected my ability to put effort into things in later life.

At college and when I did my undergraduate degree, where the routine of teaching asks you to be present and engaged, I still found that whenever I was under my own steam, being set assignments or projects or essays, the low motivation/procrastination/laziness maelstrom was present and powerful. I would leave big tasks till the absolute last minute, I would pull multiple of all-nighters for 4000 word jobs that needed to be fluffless. I struggled particularly with assignments that were deadline-less, that required contribution or reflection over an extended period of development. Again, by hook or by crook, everything got done, despite lots of stress, and I mostly did alright.

Sometimes I think back to The Most Productive Year of My Life, 2017-18, living in Bristol, immediately after my degree and before my masters, and wonder how I did it. In that year

• I had a non-art job
• I worked on an intense play as an assistant director for four months
• I formed A Magnolia with my close friend, where we made three pieces of performance throughout the year
• I was on a young producer’s scheme at a theatre, culminating in the production of three events, one of which was a full day performance fest
• Formed A Room Full Of People and created Nothing with them, totally DIY and self-directed
• In the Jan-Jul period, had two extra jobs as assistant for young people’s theater workshops
• Did a lot of ‘networking’ in the scene in Bristol
• Was also very social and was out n about a lot

And I just don’t see how that was possible.. It seems incongruous with the habits I know of myself now. Like it was a different person. (It was.)

But if I’m being rational I remember that that year was not all that those bullet points make it out to be. I wasn’t making much money all year, and was riding on the residue of the full maintenance grants I’d got during my undergraduate degree. I had to quit the assistant director gig and abandon the company because I became so uncomfortable I had a breakdown. I was drinking so much and so often that at the end of the year I decided I had to stop entirely. My personal relationships got strained and I was a cunt. At points I was really really low, and was suicidal and sometimes self-harming. Also, the Gender Trouble was rapidly intensifying. So on some level, I know enev to this day that if these are the consequences, the other side of the coin of Jord Being Productive, I’m not really going to be up for it. You can see how this mentality does not bode well for future struggles with motivation.

When I moved away to do my masters, I felt refreshed and relieved for The Most Productive Year of My Life to be behind me, and the creative, philosophical and emotional development I had while I was doing my Masters was exciting, affirming and uplifting. But my laziness and lack of motivation was back with a vengeance. Any progress I thought I had made on those habits in the year I was referring to as a ‘trial-by-fire’ ran out of my fingers like wet sand. I was back to the all-nighters and making up months of development cos I was writing it the week before the deadline. Again, I feel so lucky and often guilty that I am apparently smart enough that I can get away with working like this, and ‘achieving’ what I do.

Then, a few months after graduating my Masters, the pandemic came. I don’t think it takes much skill of comprehension to guess the effect that that had on my productivity. Now, there wasn’t even a semblance of external pressure to be productive – all the arts had shut down of course. In fact, Twitter was full of people saying ‘there is NO way to be productive in these unprecedented times. ALL our energy should go into looking after ourselves and each other’ which was a Get-Out-Of-Jail free card for me. Again I was lucky – lucky enough to be on a decent furlough, and on acceptable Universal Credit. So I could play video games all day for months and tell myself not to worry about my creative practice – after all, with the existential health crisis and horrifying political tableaux outside, there was enough to worry about. There was also my old friend The Gender Trouble, which reached breaking point when I was indoors, bored, scared and lonely. Thank God that my laziness allowed me the respite to make the progress I did with that then, that I was able to find the motivation to get assessed by doctors and start transition – I find it hard to think how much longer I could have gone on without that. But between the pandemic and my Gender Troubles, effectively two years of saying to myself ‘it’s OK to be lazy right now, because *gestures at the circumstances*’ is not, as it turns out, good treatment for someone with long struggles with motivation, laziness and procrastination.

After all this, and somewhat perversely, I’ve come to a point where I feel like this laziness might form a part of my inquiries in the future. I think about unproductivity and dilettantism as opposition to output-focused capitalist modes of production, and I think about finding something camp in being an artist and not looking to make art. I think a lot about the Arts Council, and offering scepticism as soft resistance to what I can only see as an exploitative and broken, yet somehow hegemonic model of funding art. I am interested about these lines of inquiry, though I think there’s a fine line between engaging with the lazy, the sceptical, the reluctant, the cynical, the jaded as methodological approaches and making excuses for one’s behaviour. 

I made a big deal about being ‘back’ last year. I thought I had motivation in buckets, and some good ideas to get me rolling. But one way or another, those bad habits slipped back to me – low motivation cycling into no ideas generated, making excuses to myself for missing a studio session, giving myself a break for ??, feeling sad about feeling sad about not having anything to show, feeling embarrassed when people say they liked a newsletter because I know there ain’t another one coming, and before I know it I’m telling myself I’m ok with the fact its been like 6 months without really doing anything! 

Believe it or not, I would really like to do a PhD in the next few years. I think my ideas are good, and I think I could do them. With my history of laziness, I often think ‘who am I kidding?’.

I don’t really know what the answers are. I feel like I know all the tips, tricks and adages – ‘just get yourself in the studio’, ’stop writing and get on your feet’, ’ideas won’t come if you put pressure on yourself’ – I literally know all these things to be the case. I just mostly can’t bring myself to follow them. (That said, if anyone has any advice, I am always grateful.)

And after all that, and despite getting here two and a half hours later than planned today, and requiring both a little cry and a pep talk from my flatmate; I am back in the studio this week. Got a new idea for a performance, and a couple of new approaches. Trying some new stuff. And as always, I will try my best with it.

Until the next Big Gap. 

Jord x