I feel like I came to some understanding today – that my determination of the “success” or “failure” of this project has to come from myself. This isn’t the kind of work that I can put in a gallery and have people tell me it looks nice. Nobody can really tell me if it is right or wrong, interesting or not. So I am forced to answer for myself these questions of whether this is interesting or worth doing and what it means to do it. And it is exactly this situation I have set up for myself, addressing these questions, that makes me feel right now that this was something worth doing. It is easy to take something you feel intensely, take one small convenient piece of it, and create an elaborate abstraction that is pleasing or intriguing or pretty. However, I think that the largest measure of success in a project for me is the amount that is learned from it. In this case, working on something that doesn’t let me hide safely several layers of abstraction removed, but forces me to think and question and try to understand better everything as it comes up opens myself directly to everything I fear and usually try to avoid, but also to a great possibility for learning.
[LAUREN wakes up in Cambridge.]
[LAUREN contemplates ending this project.]
[Setting: 2:00pm]
MIKE: Hey Lauren, want to grab coffee at toscis or 1369?
LAUREN: Yeah, that sounds good, I just got back from a run, so how about I meet you there at 2:30
MIKE: sounds good
[Setting: coffee shop, 2:30pm]
[Riveting conversation begins over a cup of coffee. During which which mike convinces LAUREN not to end scripted life project]
[Setting: sometime]
LAUREN: [On the phone] Hey, did you still want to do dinner or something tonight?
HANA: Sure! Want to cook?
LAUREN: Yeah. Your place or mine? What should we make?
[Setting: evening. LAUREN and HANA cook dinner together. They eat it.]
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