Lightening My Load

I like setting goals for myself. I like writing lists and crossing the items off as they get completed. It has been my practice for many years now to make myself a list of goals at the beginning of the new year, to keep it handy to judge my progress and to check off items at year's end. It gives me a sense of purpose throughout the year and a sense of accomplishment at the year's end.  This year is no different other than I am publicly announcing my intentions.

This year is going to be about "lightening my load".  There is a lengthy list of how this can happen which is too daunting to share.  In my creative life, however, the completion of unfinished stitching projects will be part of reducing the weight I carry.

My quilting guild has had a UFO challenge for the past two years. After submitting your list of unfinished projects at the beginning of the year, you hopefully work on getting them done throughout the year  with the expectation of winning a prize or at least some personal satisfaction.  After doing this for two years, I was feeling pretty comfortable that I only had about 15 such projects. 

My friend Ann (@Laughing Gas Quilts), who has a way of making reality a little more real, recommended digging the unfinished projects out and taking a photograph of them.  I didn't realize the shock value of doing this.  I was expecting perhaps 20 projects.  The photographs stopped at 32! And with the 10 others that I know I have but didn't photograph that's 42 projects in various stages of unfinishedness.  This is not a happy thought. It is actually quite a heavy thought, one which could drag creative pursuits to a halt.  It actually made my load heavier even before I got a chance to lighten it. Since running off to a deserted island with just these projects for entertainment is not a option, I need to get to work at finishing at least some of these. 

Now I like to number my lists and to set numeric goals for myself. For example, in 2016 I set a goal of knitting 16 pairs of socks.  I did.  In 2017, I again set the goal of 17 pairs of knitted socks and took great pride in super-passing my expectations by knitting 24 pairs. (I can be a bit of an overachiever at times.) But with these UFOs I am not sure what to do.  Should I try to do 20 projects in 2020? Can I do 20 of these projects? Do I want to do 20? I want to have less waiting to be finished and my heart tells me to aim for half but my head tells me that is too much. My compromise is that I am going to work on 20 of these projects this year and move them forward and to write about each of those 20.  I might not finish them but I will move them closer to being done.  At year's end, it will be very interesting to see how much I have actually accomplished in making my stitching year about the process of lightening my load rather than about the number of actual finishes. And who knows maybe I will have some finishes to share.

Just to make this all the more real, here are the photographs of my 32 unfinished projects.

Wish me luck and please stay tuned to give me moral support in getting some of this weight off. I need the support because my reality isn't just going to be about finishing the unfinished. New projects have already been started. The first six weeks of 2020 have been about more than just pondering the next blog post. Cheers.