"Seamlessly executed, reflecting none of the anxious effort which went into its execution." 

Though I barely recall the subject matter (a paper on Gerard Manley  Hopkins) I still recall word-for-word the comment from my college adviser at Barnard, next to an A on my senior paper. 

Prescient was he. I think his comment, has in some ways become a distillation and benchmark for my achievements, however few or many, and frankly of my anxieties: constant scribbling, questioning, editing, self-interrogation, practice and revision, to arrive at a product, whether procedural, written, oral, programmatic, culinary, ritual, song, or in performance. 

The results yielded can feel transformative or performative, elevating or drudging. Either way, for me, they can only be as pristine and authentic as the processes are rigorous. 

The work of seeming seamlessness elevates and exhausts; I spend myself, until depletion. 

RYS