§1. I wrote my dissertation in an absurdly short period of time because I spent the weeks before it trying to bring its entire shape into view in my mind. This was obviously a ridiculous idea; I couldn't really hold more than a few of its parts in my mind simultaneously at any moment, I simply do not have the working memory capacity. When I eventually got around to writing, much of this planning became irrelevant anyway as I became responsive to how the work was materialising. This was the lesson I'd learned: you cannot plan in detail complex projects; you can—and ought to—situate yourself within the domains they belong to, lay out a conservative, provisional, and definitely incomplete plan, and then act.
§2. I've managed to largely neglect this lesson in every subsequent project of significance I have undertaken. Maybe it's more accurate to say I've resisted it dutifully and aggressively, because it isn't true to say I waited to have a complete plan in place to develop Pond, just one that was unadvisedly detailed. One way to frame my tendency to resist this lesson is as a fear of uncertainty; another is as a love of ideas in their speculative form, in the moments during which they can be anything, and I, who hath dominion over ideas and their possible futures, can be anyone, pure potential.
§3. I might also be waiting for an excuse, a reason to offer myself and others to persuade ourselves that the sabotage had not been orchestrated from inside the house. There are only two weeks left; I'm going to put together whatever I can and hope for the best. Pure potential preserved; all possible futures remain.
§4. Why should this all matter? Because I want to carry out the projects of my life. I realise however that it isn't clear to me that it is more important that they are carried out at all than that they are carried out well. Let me offer to myself the alternative: they are left unfinished and forgotten, all possible futures dormant within them, and my life stumbles on mostly as a matter of inertia, inviting all the viciousness that consumes men who do not realise their freedom.