This is the allegoric representation on why it took me a ridiculously long time to finish a 3 - part series on stalking for Conflict Research Group, International.
The deeper I delved into the writing project, the worse it got. The more I tried to be precise in my writing the more I discovered the whole field and everything in it was unclear, undefined and difficult to identify. I wondered if this is what Scott felt like years ago up in the outlands of Canada. Scott being a cousin who was contracted by the Canadian government to go out and identify all the plants growing in the grasslands and then to categorize which ones were indigenous and which ones were interlopers. He spent weeks out there with his dog/wolf hybrid. Sometimes days on on end without seeing another human. Looking at each little growing thing seeking to answer two questions. What are you? Do you belong here?
Working on the stalking articles I felt like what I imagined Scott might have felt weeks into the project. Overwhelmed by all the possibilities. While Scott was digging through the underbrush and plucking at leaves and stems, I was digging through published material and various taxonomies. Plucking through Bureau of Justice statistics while also periodically disentangling myself from my monkey brain chatter rising up through a field of personal experience (having been stalked twice). On the second rewrite of article 2 of 3 all I could see was an expanse of unnamed possible patterns in human behavior and fields of possible taxonomies - some established, others undetermined. And then a feeling of futility.
And that's where I wonder if Scott and I shared another experience. If he might have looked out across the landscape as it dropped off into the infinity of the horizon and pondered on the possibility there might be no true end to the project - a fuck-this, what's the point? - moment.
The chatter that ran through my little monkey brain sounded a lot like that and I, in my fantasy of presumed solidarity with a family elder I respect, I wondered if we shared something.
- why am I doing this?
- what's the point?
- I'm sure there's someone better at this, knows more about this
- I don't think I'm smart enough to figure this out
- No one's going to read this anyway (it doesn't add to any valuable body of knowledge)
- I probably don't know what I'm talking about
When I got really lost in the weeds, I pitched the unfinished, multi-versioned articled #2 to a friend. One I trust to call bullshit - one I trust to say whoa sister, way too much personal drama.
His feedback, over a couple of conversations, made things worse which made the whole project easier. He had his own wonderings, musings and questions about the topic and behavior patterns and affects. I realized there was a metarphoric metric ton of plants in this field that were never going to be fully identified in a little 3-part article series. So I let go of that part and suddenly I had a finished product. There are a series of assumptions in the articles and a more than equal chance they are wrong as much as they are right.
And that's okay. This is what I've got. Personal experience + a little professional knowledge + some training in the arena of personal defense/safety. Maybe it adds to the body of knowledge. Maybe the suppositions are so wrong, it will send someone else off in a particularly right direction.
My monkey's need to be correct - was part of my problem. I didn't want to misinform and my past experiences where telling me I was supposed to get it all figured out. Ego's a bitch.
And as I finish up this post, I am having a flashback. Remembering a moment with an intuitive, intelligent, slightly off-kilter ex-heroine addict-turned-leadership-trainer. John looked at me and made an observation. "You like to observe and assess and figure things out, don't you?" Yup.
"Yeah....that's not really going to work for you." He said a few more things but I don't remember them because the rest of it just completely pissed me off and all I remember was the moment when I called him out.
"Are you challenging me?" to which John replied by covering the distance of a conference hall in a nano second and stood well inside my 3 foot space bubble, leaned in and announced with more certainty than I thought possible - "Yes! Yes.I.Am."
This was almost 20 years ago. He was right then, and he is still right. I am better when I stop trying to figure it all out ahead of time. We all are. There is a difference between being an idiot and ignoring the information and experiences gained by others - the wisdom that exists through the knowledge of people who have traveled the terrain ahead of us. And when we hit uncharted spaces - figuring out all the possibilities before we move into the terrain is paralyzing. The new stuff, the fun stuff, the fantastically terrifying stuff is out there in the weeds and the uncertainty and the wrong-ness that is guaranteed by playing in spaces that are uncharted.
"Beyond this place there be dragons" translated to ink on my arm as a reminder that the best lessons are learned playing with the dragons of uncharted territory clearly isn't enough of a personal reminder, because writing these articles would have been much easier if I had remembered.
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