I’ve been thinking a lot about engagement. I SO often live in the future. I am making promises to myself and working toward them.
The problem is that I CANNOT keep promises to myself.
I can certainly make them, but I have no control over whether or not circumstances will allow me to keep them.
When I am making art, I sometimes make myself a promise about what the art will be. I try to work toward a specific and narrow end with that original promise in mind. In doing this, I am ignoring any environmental cues or changes in how I might be engaging in the project and simply plowing ahead with the original vision.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this, except that is causes me to disengage from the present. True creative work is about full engagement in the present, not in the future or with some past promise.
When I am ignoring the present moment because I am working toward some future end, I am ignoring the very part of me that is most capable of reaching that end. I am losing my life for the sake of some future promise.
Creativity is about full engagement - here and now.
In this interview, 
November 12th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Would it help if I said, your are not the only one. In my case the present is too compacted; to dense to focus on what I want or need to; so it’s easy to hop on over into the future where those constraints don’t exist. Of course the ideal future moment doesn’t come. Conclusion: un-compact the present; which I’ve found to be a big task.