Pablo Ruiz Picasso: The Blind Man (1903)
Other Titles:
Original Language Title: Mendiant
Former Title: The Blind Beggar
Alternate Title: L'aveugle
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes.

"I need to stumble upon it by myself…"

Scrolling was never MyWork, but a distraction from it. MyWork, however humble and modest, has always felt sacred to me, even if not to anybody else. I figure this is right and proper since nobody else can accomplish MyWork. MyWork seems at least as much a curse as a blessing in the same way that anyone might deep down revere and despise even their greatest gift. Nobody else ever gets to experience MyWork from my perspective, and it often seems lame from over here, however brilliant or not it might appear from over there. I will never experience MyWork from anyone else’s perspective, and nobody else will ever see it from mine.

The time I spend scrolling around my social media threads cannot be spent engaging in MyWork. This doesn’t quite qualify as tragic. Even I allow myself some time away from my workbench. But I am still Protestant and Catholic enough to firmly believe that MyWork comes first, or should, and that it amounts to a sin to play before completing my daily chores. This explains why I rise so damned early every morning, before distractions get too active, and finish my daily writing obligation before the rest of the world can get up and distracting. My will might be no stronger than the least of any other. I just corner myself along the edge of the day when distractions seem least prominent.

I face a blank page every damned day. I’ve grown accustomed to focusing to completion. The few times that conditions weren’t conducive to me completing my work, I was wracked with something similar to guilt. I knew I could never regain that time, that I had squandered away a part of my legacy. I returned the next day to resume my work’s cadence, but I’ve not forgotten any of the times I abandoned my bench before completing my sacred obligation.

MyWork bores me sometimes. I’m certain that Picasso found even his remarkable universe to be well beneath him some mornings. Familiarity can’t seem to help but foster some contempt sometimes. My relationship with MyWork has not been consistent. My interest waxes and wanes, like anything, I guess. I maintain a schedule that’s capable of being disrupted but usually isn’t, though it can always be encroached upon. My scrolling habit, or obsession, or addiction—whatever—has come to pose an unclear and distantly present threat to MyWork. This recognition, this begrudging acknowledgement, sparked my interest in initiating this Unscrolling effort. I see the complications deeply embedded in my intention, yet I will persist in exploring this seeming contradiction: I feed my social media while attempting to break the attraction others’ social media feeds have cast in my direction.

MyWork could never be anyone else’s. Only mine. If the most personal also tends to seem the most universal, then I might conclude that MyWork will remain relevant only if it remains personal. I try not to tell anyone else what to do, figuring that’s their own work to do. I can tell my stories, and if another finds some insight by reading about my modest struggles, so much the better for us both. I acknowledge that I sometimes gain insight, too, from scrolling through my social media feeds. Not always, but sometimes. When my scrolling somehow avoids becoming mindless.

MyWork can become mindless, too. It requires a spark that mere scheduling can’t impart. It needs time to consider for itself before my fingers find the keys. If I expend that cogitation time scrolling, I tend to lose what I should have been seeking. My beginner’s mind has not been filled with experience yet. Conclusions still successfully evade my searches. Scrolling might induce a mindlessness, but never once a beginner’s mind. That takes empty space not subsumed with clever production or prescient scripting. I don’t need to be told what I need to know. I need to stumble upon it by myself in MyWork.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz