A bit of wine-soaked despair hit me Thursday evening just as I had completed the MIDI path out. I expressed this to Mrs. Skunkwork as a feeling of pressure—a lack of time. What I didn't say, because I couldn't admit it to myself at the time, was that I had stayed in code longer than necessary because I was hiding from the unexpected difficulty I experienced this week attempting to switch into thinking visually for the art and design components, which now need to be returned to in order to complete this loop.

The idea was so unwieldy and large I said that I felt there wasn't enough time to have a full outer life and still be able to completely submerge as deeply as I felt was necessary to complete the project. It felt impossible in the moment. Ms. Skunkwork refused to accept the idea that a person could not be both an artist and healthy. It took another day of thinking and some good games of Go to understand that she was right. Health is a requirement, not an impediment.

Beautiful weather arrived just in time the next day. After a very good breakfast on our sunny porch, I read (or reread?) the Borges story 'The Immortal' and drank coffee and listened to the birds. We drove to the next town and hung out in a small comic shop and talked to the owner. The wind and road were restorative, and I confessed to Ms. Skunkwork that I thought she had been right and that I thought I would write about it today. I told her about the difficulty with switching over into a visual mode. Mr. Frink (skunkfriend) drove that clearly home. "It's interesting since that [the highly demanding multi-discipline approach] was kind of an initially attractive part of the project. It probably still is or can be."

The difficulty in switching over from code brain and remembering how to be excited by a visual design had confronted me with an uncomfortable fear of failing my own premise and had provided me with an easy out. "Too difficult, too complex, too much time required." Fortunately, the answer was also in the complaint. Hiding, in the work itself, from the effort required to be relaxed and present and observant enough to be inspired to something genuine, is deadly.

This little crisis has also been a good reminder of another component of the original premise; that the work should inform itself as much as possible from step to step rather than adhering to a plan—that to complete something both complex and honest, it must be done with patience, devotion, and open feeling.

The homeward arc of these loops is more treacherous to that idea than I had anticipated, it is too easy to make a checklist when an -ish final form can be imagined. Gratitude to Ms. Skunkwork, Mr. Frink, and all the bird friends.