take on an impossible mission

But I don’t think I’m quite able to articulate it. It has to do with creating a new world in my aesthetic. An ideal world, that can begin to exist in my head, and I can build it one tiny piece at a time. I think this has been my impossible mission my whole life, but now I’m ready to adopt it for real and to start making real progress.

We’ve been trained to enjoy completion. A project is fully enjoyed when it is over. Keep your eye on the prize. An end motivates, draws you towards it, and ultimately pays you in cash.

On the other hand, we’ve all had that anticlimatic feeling of a job well done. It’s as if the actual enjoyment can never happen, it’s either in the future, or in the past… it’s never in the present. Because ends aren’t tangible. And of course this conjures the new-agey phrase we’ve all heard about how it’s the journey that matters. But I’ve always had trouble understanding what that means. It’s a paradox. If the journey is the end, then it’s the journey to the journey that’s the real end, then it’s the journey to the journey to the journey that’s the real end, until your head explodes. BOOM. I reject the premises of this statement. Mu.

I’m going to think of an impossible mission and strive to complete it. I think there’s no way to do this other than by coming to terms with something true about the universe.

I was inspired to do this by Jane McGonigal’s cookie rolling project, as I too am a fan of Sisyphus.

Now I just need to think of an appropriately impossible mission. A couple traits it must have:

• Progress must be able to be made in a steady matter… at no point should the next step be impossible, or even really difficult, in itself.
• The tasks of the impossible mission should be enjoyable in themselves.
• I am thinking it might be a documentation project of some sort.
• Something social and uplifting would be nice.