A whole new layer to it...

I have been working on a project for the last 9 months- the last 5 months in just writing it up. The report has gone through at least 10 revision and complete re-writes. By now, some of the member of the team are just tired of it. "No more!", is their call. Any talk of the document and they take cover. But that does not stop the edits from coming. Every time one reads a report, one wants to polish it just a bit more, maybe just rearrange stuff to see how it looks or just add a personal touch. It is natural.

I greeted these changes with annoyance. Can we stop being perfectionists?, I wondered. This continued for almost 2 months till I noticed something really strange. I began to like this process of making changes. There was a sense of satisfaction in implementing them - like I had crossed another hurdle on a steeple-chase. As the noted violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch would say, " ...the secular and the sacred merge". Work and play suffused. It became almost fun to incorporate the new set of changes which keeping the old integrity and philosophy of the report intact. I actually denied admitting to this pleasure. This can't be true, I should be angry as the others are!

Now, as we are almost ready to print, I feel a sense of having achieved more than I would have if there were just 2 rounds of edits. I leave the project happy and content- so different from what I felt two months ago. Throwing more time at a problem, doing something you hate agan and again can sometimes allow another deeper perspective to emerge. Isn't it?