When I was quite young, definitely under the age of 10, I remember my mother chastising me for starting more projects than I could reasonably finish and exhorting me, for once at least, to stick to something long enough to get it finished. Obviously, 40 some-odd years later, this is a lesson I have yet to learn. There remain piles of projects yet unfinished and ideas teaming around in my brain all just waiting for the opportunity to give birth to the next project.
Although I refuse to make lists of promises at the beginning of each new year, I remain determined to whittle down the project pile, and they are not all fiber-related projects. And actually, I feel like I have a good grip on the situation. But still I am torn. It is not that discipline is completely foreign, but that there is no pressure from outside forcing me to stick to some strict regime of one-project-at-a-time. And the biggest hurdle, for me at least, is actual mindfulness, at least where my projects are concerned. The idea that I should have a plan, and approach my projects in some kind of orderly and informed fashion, rather than just dropping everything and running breathless after each pretty idea that flits through my brain, remains a struggle. My thoughts get ahead of my hands, and truthfully even my words, or my ability to express my ideas. More times than I care to think about this year, I am working on one thing while my brain has moved on by leaps and bounds and I have no idea what I am working on, or even, awkwardly, what I am speaking of or writing about, and the ideas become all jumbled into some incoherent tangle which wasn't at all my original intention. I become a fool, an exuberant enthusiastic fool, but still a fool: this is not the desired goal.
And so perhaps the best course remains to take baby steps and work slowly, finishing small things, and working in manageable bits.
I have not progressed on to the cutting or sewing stage of my gray and yellow tee project.
I am nearly done with a pair of socks to wear with my heavy work boots, a project that was supposed to have been started and finished last fall. Had I not seen fit to rip a half-done sock and start over due to a silly mistake, these might be done. But mindfulness seems to be an ongoing problem. I have been out tramping in the garden and the woods several times this year already so the call of the mud and grass and trees is strong. A pair of thick cushy socks that actually fill in the gaps in my boots becomes an increasingly urgent need.
At least I have made a small dent in the stash, a little appetizer before the bigger projects that must come.