Brinkmanship

I do my best thinking in the shower.  I take my longest and best fucking showers in a hotel.  Cause the hot water never ends right?  Fuck it, I'm not paying for it directly right?  In college it was the same.  If there was a paper due in oh, I don't know, hypothetically, 4 hours?

It's shower time.

Maybe it's the noise, the noise or the feeling, the soap, the preoccupation.  I think it's the ability to be doing something while focusing entirely on something else.  

(Not what I meant)

I find similar thought patterns in activities such as running and golf.  In that sense I think one's conscious self is so ingrained in the lather, rinse, repeat, actions, that the subconscious is really able to flourish and thrive.  That area from one's brain where true inspiration is cultivated becomes suddenly so accessible.  For me, it was always a "Eureka!" Moment.  My great idea, my pivotal thesis or intangible undeniable argument had been just lingering below the surface.  Always present, just needed to be discovered.  There was never any doubt that I was lacking a great idea, pretentious as it may sound.  Then I would emerge from the shower, wearing nothing but a towel, and proceed to pull off what I had previously thought was impossible.

For the record, this is called "Brinkmanship."

A fairly new term coined to describe those who push a situation to dangerous limits.  It can be used in a contemporary sense to describe those who insist upon procrastination as a means to feel the pressure as an ultimatum unfairly enforced upon them.  They will refuse to accept their previous inaction as cause for their sudden predicament.  They will however, ally all against them and view the work to be completed as a race against time, as a challenge.

Denial 101.  One of the most predictable human emotions.  This couldn't be my fault.  And one would think having this self awareness would lead one to scrap brinkmanship in favor of the more practical, preparation and foresightedness?

Well one would be wrong.  Don't you see?  You'd be removing the thrill of it all.

Those who employ brinkmanship likely view themselves as those, who thrive upon pressure.  That raising the stakes to this level was not of their action, it was inevitable and now they must rise to that challenge and get "high" so to speak off the victory.  Some will maintain that their best work only comes from the pressure.  You know who employed brinkmanship with fantastic outcomes (other than me)?

JFK.  Boom.  

This post would be infinitely better had there been a deadline imposed upon it.