Stasis can be Good

Daily writing prompt

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

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Not everyone understands or appreciates the use of stasis. I am not the sort of person who gets off on standng still, but there are times that doing exactly that gets me the best long term results. You think I’m kidding when I say that standing still can be hard work? I’m not. There can come a time when need to slow down and realize that all your running around and hard work is getting you nowhere. That’s the time to just stop,

Stasis

So, stasis as a creative and productive endeavor is new to you? Who knew! I sometimes refer to it as cogitating my veritabilities. I got the phrase from my road buddy, Bill Null. We’d be working on some project, or doing some idiocy, and getting nowhere. Bill would declare, at some point, “I’m going to cogitate the veritabilities of this. Off we’d go to sit in the sun and talk things out. Some might retreat into Psalm singing, others into drinking. We’d retreat into stasis.

Despite many people who do nothing being described as lazy, there is little laziness about, let’s call it cogitative stasis. You have to get the mental gears moving. You have to question the underlying veracity of what you’ve been doing. Sometimes, when you emerge on the other side, you face unpleasant truths.

In the days when Bill and I were peripatetic Pius Itinerants, the consequences of this could be major-we’d get a yen to repaint our roommates’ bedroom turquoise without telling him, just to see him yell when he got home. This would result in severe readjustments in where we lived. After a while, we spent some serious cogitative time coming to grips with the idiocy of our actions, and attempted to make amends. Eventually, we grew out of our idiocies.

You don’t grow out of the idiocies by burrowing in and snuggling with them. You have to call for a full pause, a clean stop, and a cogitative stasis. This is hard work. There is nothing easy about being an idiot who has dug a mile-deep mine and wants to get out. You need a plan. And you don’t get one in the middle of your current rip through whatever destruction you’re involved in. You need a stop.

Digging Out

So a cogitative stasis is hard work. In my case, it’ll sneak up on me. I’ll get flustered when I realize that it’s been a week and I have not done a damned thing productive in the shop. Then I’d work through my visualization of the current project. At some point, that part of me I refer to as the pre-conscious informs me that the issue is the lack of perspective in how the design is laid out. To get the effect of the hull emerging from the background, the hull needs to be shaped just so. Now it’s up to me, the carver, to think about how to achieve that effect—more cogitative stasis.

What I’ve just described is what’s actually going on for me these past two weeks. It may seem minor. But the process was a big part of how I quit smoking. so I know that. for me, it yields dividends.

So there it is. How stasis can be hard work and yield results. Remember – next time your spouse accuses you of being lazy and doing nothing, let them know about Cogitative Comtemplation, and the theory of Creative Stasis. Remember to buy my book when it hits the bookstores and Amazon.