I’ve had a bit of an obsession lately with finishing things. Checking it off the list, setting it aside and resting a little easier. There is just something so exceedingly satisfying in finishing a book (albeit, quite sad, too), or finishing a project (currently knitting. Seems a bit daunting), or a tv series (apparently, after my binge this week, this also is quite important in my schema of “finishing”).
And another, ironic example: this post. I’ve found “finishing things” scrawled on random papers where I have manic to-do lists, in my planner, on a book mark, in my work brainstorming pages. And the funny thing is, I forgot I had started this post. I started a new one just now so I could check that idea – “finishing things” – off my to-do lists, one less thing to think about. I’m not quite sure what to say about that, but I think I see an obsession here.
I’ve realized it’s not just little things, lately. It is vastly satisfying to “finish” a pair of shoes. To wear them til death does us part. And to need a new pair. To finish one thing, so as to properly start another. I find this deeply satisfying and I don’t even really know how to put words to it very well. Only that it is most certainly simple pleasure number 82. Unless I already used that one, and then I’ll change it.
I remake lists so that I don’t have to look at all the scratched out things anymore and can start a new page. Feeling like all the past things are done. I wait til the last minute to go to the grocery so that I can feel like I finished all my food and really need more. So gratifying to have eaten it all before it goes bad. (That sounds weird and like a quirky non-diet, but hey.) Finishing a knitting project and then having the right to start the next. Finishing a journal, sad to see an old friend go, but anxious to see a book of blank pages.
There is a back and forth to this, a mulit-tiered phenomenon, this finishing. The goodness and accomplishment of setting something aside, coupled with the loss of what has been invested in, spent, part of, etc, as well as the the looking forward to what comes next. And, I can’t help but be curious about the things that have been on my to-do list for years. Welp.
That’s for another entry, I suppose.
