Today I did something I have never done before, and I will never do again. I have been procrastinating doing this for a long time. It seemed odious and frightening to me, and if I didn’t do it, no one would notice, die, be hurt or be sad.
Nonetheless, I did it this morning.
I trashed my whole body of work, more than 30 years of consulting, contained in more than 375 reports, all done to the best of my ability and always with care, meticulous research and anxiety. These were my babies, birthed with an insecurity most don’t understand. No matter how good my previous study was or how much praise I was given, I always felt I was starting over with each new assignment. Yes, complete impostor syndrome! Never resolved…
My library of work was a literal library, sitting proudly on shelves in my office. Anyone who walked into my office could see the results of the past 30 years of my professional life. As time went on and the body of past work became more prolific, I needed to box up some and put them on shelves in the garage. But I always kept the most current ones, perhaps those from the past 36 months close to my chair and close to my heart. I could pluck one off the shelf any time I wanted!
About 10 years ago the magic of digitization happened and my prized body of work became an icon in a folder that when clicked, disclosed the craziness of technology. Presto, the fruit of my effort materialized on a screen. I could store them, send them to clients, keep them in a new kind of library…a digital library! Those that weren’t able to be digitized were painstakingly scanned by my fabulous assistant Erica who didn’t mind doing it. (It would have driven me mad!)
I was very scared that I would miss something, or that the cloud would burst, or that the internet would break! Especially knowing that the “cloud” is really a huge roomful of very heavy computers that could be taken out by the Russians any time they wanted (which didn’t help my anxiety). I liken it to a fire that, incidentally, could also have engulfed my paper reports and wiped out my entire body of work.
I asked my adult kids and I asked my assistant, “Do I need these anymore?” only to be answered with a resounding chorus of “No!” So it was decided. I had to throw out my babies! But first I needed to understand if all the reports had a corresponding PDF icon in my digitized library. Not so easy to do, since there were 375 reports to check and four versions of the library databases, three of them in excel and one a list of the digitized PDF reports. It took 4 weeks to do and involved Erica’s and Charley’s help.
That task completed, I decided again (with my husband’s help) which jobs were special enough to keep as “mementos,” which were my most important assignments, and which got developed into now beautiful, successful, thriving, operating projects. My adult babies! There were about fifteen of these, so we made a list and pulled the paper copies. But then I looked over my excel list and saw so many more that were memorable, and I expanded the list. I now have about fifty reports I want to keep in their physical format. I found most of them but had a few left to find.
Easy peasy, but not so fast…
This morning came. The handyman was coming at 11 to fix a few things and to haul off the boxes of reports I was taking to be shredded and donated to the dump. I furiously began looking through boxes to find the last few I had not found before. Yet as I was doing this, I could not believe what I discovered. My body of work, my 40 years in the business, is very impressive. It was the first step in the development of some pretty imaginative, ground-breaking, singular kind of entertainment, cultural and retail real estate developments. 80,000 hours of work, give or take, and I had something to show for the effort! (This of course harkens back to my fundamental insecurity, and my constant feeling that I’m only as good as my last job.)
When I first had kids, I had a sort of overall goal – that I raise children who would make the world a better place than when they emerged. But going through my reports today, and throwing out some of my paper babies, I discovered I too have made the world a better place… and I am damn proud of it!
Over the years, we have wrestled with all the issues associated with new development including disagreements about what it should look like, what its mission should be, where it should be sited, who is its targeted audience (please, don’t say everyone!), and what’s the best way to keep the project on-time and on-budget. To be clear, these issues are complex and are made more difficult when there are many masters to serve. Still, when the project is to reflect the points of view, hopes, dreams, and legacies of America’s most important cultural export, (which I believe is cinema) there must be the most careful consideration to each one.
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