Not too long ago - say a couple of years before - I was reintroduced to an idea which I found rather transformative in the context. One that of the rough copy and the fair copy.
It was about taking meeting notes. If you’re writing in your rough copy, you don’t have to worry about structure, spelling, or presentation. You sit down later, and take down what is important in your fair copy.
In a way, this acts as a revision. A reason to revisit your notes, read your action items, and so on.
The idea grew on me and I often started looking at things as rough and fair. That was, until, I realised I’d been putting off decision making, answerability, action, and almost the obligation/duty to be judged.
If what I’m doing is patently rough, there’s no point questioning me until I’ve faired it up. With an ever increasing pile of rough work that needs attending to, and ever decreasing free time, the backlog become untenable and eventually got put on the backburner. Funnily, the backburner on my home stove doesn’t work. So there’s that cruel metaphor.
Yesterday, when I asked T to stop worrying about something or the other because we’ll do it later, she said something that stayed with me. “When is later?”
Some people do have the luxury of having a ‘later’ to look forward to. We don’t. Our later is written off, mortgaged away, sold to slavery.
Life is now. In this moment. It’s not a rough moment. It’s a fair moment.
I’ll take this feeling in my day and to my work and to all the small and big things that make up life for me. No more putting off that mail for later. No more of the endless drafts and V0s and working copies.
In a way, it’s exhilarating. A thrilling realisation that I’d been holding a live wire in my bare hands all this while.
The charge flowing through - time itself burning as I coast through life - no less real, no more slow because I chose to label it ‘rough’.