This Needs to Get Done, or “Storytime”

“Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.“ - Audre Lorde

Like many busy bodies, who are creatives and intellectuals, I always feel like there is so much to get done, so much to learn, so much to do.

I plan stretching while I am writing blogs, doing casual contract work, organizing a playlist or catching up on emails. I am willing to schedule my nap time or “still time” to 5 minute just to lay down flat and give my body a still break, or cut my TV show screen time (if any) right in the middle of a show as to not get too comfortable in the distraction.

The key for me has been to schedule as best I can, stick to the plan as best as possible and be consistent. Consistency is my very best friend!!!

I can’t get that rhythm? I keep singing or humming it. I can’t get that step? I keep practicing it in intervals (e.g. ‘‘e” amount of times per day). I can’t get through that book? I set a page limit per day and keep reading. I don’t understand a thing the author is saying? I look up a word or two, but keep going, because I tend to retain some understanding and end up having some kind of reflection on the topic regardless. “Just get it done” is what I keep reminding myself.

Even if I didn’t do my one hour of stretching today, but I stretched. It got it done. Simple as that.

The truth is, what often takes the backburner are things that intimidate me… Yes, I am an academic who is oftentimes intimidated by books, archives and libraries. I get both nervous and excited about what I can find or will have trouble finding in the many sources I look through.

Asking for the help I need has been a big learning curve for me over the years. The work doesn’t have to be perfect… it can’t be, because as a dance mentor of mine once told me, “perfection is death”, represented by a square. You can’t move forward if you are a square… or at least it is very hard. You stay static. But you can move forward as a circle. The work needs to feel complete, done, goal-achieved, circular (not linear); not “perfect” in the strict sense of the word. Every new project is an experiment accompanied by the self-guidance and the skills each of us has honed so far in life.

I am the type of writer/scholar/creator who will probably produce something “that needs a lot of work” after the first try. Like the first draft of my dissertation proposal, or even my first chapter. I didn’t expect any differently when both my supervisors firmly stated, each on their own, that “this needs a lot of work” or “why don’t you start over?” This might sound harsh, but it was accompanied with kind assertions that I had already done a big chunk of the work, and that my work would undoubtedly end up being very rich in historical research.

Starting over is never starting from nothing. It’s starting from a rich foundation of confused ideas! Haha. At the very least…

So my strategy is to think of my schedule as a game I have to play and stick to; and every book, every task as a story I want to learn from.

Once (or more than once) I even cut a conversation short with a romantic interest on the phone just to find out, what did the archives say about that woman arrested by the police on her way home from work? I was curious to know, what traces were left behind? Who told her story? Or what did the author conclude from her findings in the archives? What is her take on these historical events and their relationship to the present?

I always make room for my storytime, in the morning, during the day or before bedtime. Thinking of my research work that way comforts me because “storytime” reminds me of my mother telling me stories before bed. Stories I remember were full of colours and filled my head with ideas.

When I think of those memories, I feel relaxed and relieved. I carried that feeling into my last years of high school where I read books about history, life, literature, the origins of politics and so much more. And then I dragged that same curiosity for more stories into my undergrad, which was a time when I realized even “research books” were stories that held their own biases, and where the history of a nation as distinct as Haiti’s and the Haitian Revolution of 1804 could be erased from an entire era, from a century of revolutions… How, could this be?

During my graduate studies, learning about black history in Canada was suddenly possible. Gasp! Who would of thought? I certainly hadn’t imagined it as possible at the time. I hadn’t imagined that black women could be historically placed in Canada even before Confederation of 1867. I could finally imagine that “I” made sense in Canada.

I am grateful to the Universe and to my mother for “storytime” that allows me to get everything I need to do, “done in the now”.