“Start small.
Start now.
Start everything.
And don’t bother to finish any of it.”
- Barbara Sher, Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams
A year ago I wrote as I embarked upon a little juggling experiment: How many projects could I be working on concurrently before it began to be a problem? (Blog)
Now my little experiment is reporting some results. I have learned I can indeed start many projects. Sometimes I can look away from one and start another. I notice the one I look away from tugs on me a bit. This is an energetic minus, but the energetic plus is that while I'm gone from it, that tug actually is from me, working on it, in the back of my mind. I get new insights. The work deepens.
The buzz of excitement of starting a new project then, adds up to a positive on my energy ledger. So how long then, before I start so many projects that I simply spread it too thin?
To find out, I put a loom project in every room, every corner, and carry a small one around with me too.
The joy of creating is available everywhere.
Having lots of balls in the air keeps any one of them from becoming too precious. This is good. That overly precious attitude can suppress spontaneous urges to follow inspiration where it may lead.
Preciousness can also cause me to hesitate to start.
Many projects tug at once, and still I start more! I fill the laundry room with dye projects. The cold water cotton dyes lead to being curious about heated wool dyes. This process leads me to dye roving and fleece, and to spinning the wool. Now I am making art yarn. Which leads to starting projects made out of art yarn....
And so on...
All these on top of the other things that need to be done such as daily chores, social and work obligations, that compete for time and energy, of course.
Eventually, I find a kind of saturation point. Not a point of not wanting to start even more new projects, oh no. I can always entertain a novel idea. But I am not the kind of person who is always starting but not finishing things.
I have two problems. First, I keep finishing things. I love the feeling of finishing things, so it is hard to not just stay right here with this one and just see what it will turn out like!
The second problem is not finishing things! There will always be a point at which one simply makes no appreciable progress on anything because at this rate, working on each one a little at a time, this baby hat will be ready....about when the kid starts high school!
Feeding an active project is like taking care of a beloved kid or pet; you feed it with your attention. Except, unlike with living creatures, you can deprive it of attention for irregular periods of time, as long as you keep a thread going.
Even so, like the dusty houseplant in the corner, if neglected too long, it may die. At least one of the projects I started may not ever find enough support from me to make it to completion. But maybe my diverse garden of projects is beneficial here too. The ones that don't make it get crowded out by the better ones, and I avoid wasting time on the duds.
I must admit that in the course of my experiment I don't do anything truly huge and awesome, just lots of little things, though some are still in progress. This could indicate being spread too thin. Perhaps I will now finish everything and see what happens.
I wonder when (and if, you never know) I will start that 'tactile walkable plane of orbs' project I'm thinking of .....
..Oh! Just doing that now..
"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."
-Marie Curie
A year ago I wrote
No comments:
Post a Comment