Finis!

When you've got to finish that paper...sometimes hot chocolate helps.

So, 2010 is over.

There are those who have accused me of having trouble finishing things.  I’m not someone who didn’t turn in papers in college or graduate school; in that one little area, procrastination was my friend.  Instead, I would get 90 percent of the way through a paper and decide that my topic was not merely terrible but pointless and uninteresting.  With the deadline bearing down on me like a tailgater on I-95, though, I’d have no choice but to finish and turn it in.

In real life, I have found it harder to push through the fear and trembling of that last 10 percent.  This has manifested itself, variously, as endless revision of a story that should have been considered finished; difficulty finishing projects back when I had an office job; a real aversion to saying goodbye to people; even getting all the way to the end of a knitting project and not sewing it together (but, um, also I just don’t enjoy sewing knit items together).  Sometimes, I prefer process to product; I’d rather knit with the gorgeous Sublime Organic Wool than block and wear the scarf I’ve been making with it.

Scarf started and finished on the plane from Heathrow to Dulles.

It’s not just liking the feel of the yarn in my fingers, though: it’s also the safety of not having to wear the scarf and have others see it, of not having to send out the story and hear what an editor thinks of it.  In my 20s, this was a major block, in all areas of my life.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, a few years ago life happened to me in such a way that I have been in a state of flux.  I have changed my career, spent two summers abroad, and signed a book contract (hey, how did that happen?).

As I look back over the past year, I realize that it’s brought various situations that require finishing and saying goodbye: the book deadline that sits on my shoulder even as I write this for the blog, the career change that required me to say goodbye to coworkers I really enjoyed, the summers abroad that meant leaving behind family and friends in order to take advantage of an opportunity that I definitely wanted.  At the same time, there were some goodbyes I really didn’t want to say, like the sale of my mother’s house this fall.  It had to happen, but it was so sad to say goodbye.  In the next year, Mr. Trask and I are looking at different life changes that might take us out of this area, and so I have been thinking a great deal about the complications of goodbye, of being finished with a certain part of life.

Goodbye to the tree in whose branches I used to read books; Goodbye to my mother’s house.

On Wednesday, I interviewed a student who is applying to my glorious alma mater.  She was talking about how she really wants to go to college, and at the same time knows that she is really going to miss her family, her high school friends, and the life she has in high school.  I remembered a Carolyn Hax discussion (yes, I read Carolyn Hax; don’t judge) about mixed feelings for some attendees of weddings: that there’s an ambivalence there that we often don’t acknowledge.  Even as we celebrate the couple, those closest to them may also be a bit sad that their relationship with the couple is about to change.  One commenter suggested that weddings be thought of in a similar way to high school graduation: it’s a change, and with that come both positive and negative feelings.  It’s hard to say goodbye to childhood or young adulthood in favor of a new phase of life that will represent new responsibility and new fears as well as new adventures.  This doesn’t mean we don’t do it; it means we acknowledge the difficulty as well as celebrating the excitement to come.

It occurred to me this morning that this kind of ambivalence is what holds me back when I don’t want to finish something, when I don’t want to say goodbye to 2010 in favor of 2011, when I don’t want to send out the story or stop playing with yarn in favor of wearing a sweater.  Maybe acknowledging the shadow, the sadness of saying goodbye to something that is important while moving on to something you wouldn’t want to miss, is the key.  The new possibilities in front of me are exciting as well as scary; I don’t want to miss the adventure.  At the same time, I hate to say goodbye to what is wonderful in the here and now.  And all of that is okay.  Today, I can recognize the difficulty without letting it stymie me.  That’s real progress for me, and – hey! – maybe it will help me finish more projects in 2011.

What about you?  Do you have trouble finishing knitting projects, or other kinds of projects?  Do you prefer process to product?  Tell us in the comments section!