Right now, I blog here about knitting and whatever comes to mind, I blog there about the new company that I’m involved in building. I journal my shadows under cover of darkness to keep them from creeping into the daylight hours and tangling about my feet. I share a mail project with a virtual friend (as opposed to an imaginary friend—imaginary friends don’t send you stickers or write replies to you) in which we share a journal, adding art and whatever to the pages as we go.
It feels live I live with keyboard and camera in hand, a bandolier of Sharpies slung across my chest, writing life rather than living it. There’s a lot to pick and choose from; I’m drowning in material and writing it all in my head because, of course, the perfect spot to put all this in is always in another place.
I’d like to talk about my post-project depression a little—I just finished watching the last season of Six Feet Under. The benefit of waiting for TV shows to come out on DVD is that you can fill the six disc carousel and watch until your eyes fall out of your head, knitting madly all the while. No commercials! A pause button for snack and bathroom breaks, and you can see “that” episode again and again with only a little hunting (as opposed to on videotape. I used to note the numbers for the beginning of each movie/show on the spine of a videotape so I could find them reasonably quickly. Yes, Virginia, this was back in the Dark Ages.)
Of course, the drawback is that by the time you see the shows, the rest of the world has moved on. “That was soooooo 2005.” Tra la.
So I have no one to blame but me—I knew this was the last season as I plugged it in. I knew that with a show that is predicated on death and the world going on without you as you remain only a memory blah blah blah would kill off everyone eventually and close the show off so that there was no more. No “I wonder if they ever . . .” No “Maybe those two get their act together and marry . . .” Nope, no fuzzy endings, all of it fade to white in signature style.
I just hadn’t counted on finishing a project at the same time.
I’m a process person. Big time process person. That’s why I blog rather than writing novels (although Tonstant Weader will probably chime in here and claim that each and every post is at least a novella. Pooh on you, Tonstant Weader.)
I couldn’t live with the characters, know their backstory, know their frontstory, know what they like for breakfast, then live with them and tell the slice of their life in which you get to know them—then end it all. Type my three ###’s at the end like a press release and walk away from them. Blogging, well, blogging goes on and on and on and has little bitty endings (at the end of each post) but never really stops until the day you decide to go out and live life rather than writing about it.
You see, I was working on a blanket that I’ve been knitting on for a little more than a year now (off and on; off and on since February 2005. There’s a six-months photo in the archives—October 26, 2005.) I just happened to finish it the same night as we watched the last of the show. Now it’s all over except for weaving in the ends.
It doesn’t help that I just finished another blanket that I started shortly before that.
All my long-term projects are winding down and closing off, getting ready to go out and live their useful lives.
On the one hand, I’m glad to get them done. This closes out the last of the original projects from the “Stressed Monkey Project-O-Rama” (so what do you call your “git r done” list?) It’s a good thing to finish projects because that means you can start new stuff. I limit myself to only five projects on the needles at a time, because otherwise I spread myself too thin during manic bouts of startitis, and when I come down, I come down hard, and can only sit and stare at all the things surrounding me. Lovely ideas with copious notes, and no energy at all to pick it up and proceed.
But on the other, well, they’re over. Like when a childhood friend moves away—you need permission to call long distance, and in the days before the Internet, you had to come by stamps and envelopes and stationery. You both swore you’d write every single day, and maybe you did. For a week. Or two. Where are all your friends from high school, where you inscribed “4 EvR” in each other’s yearbooks on that last day of senior year?
I don’t miss the items, not a bit. I could always make another very much like it if I took a notion to have something like that for myself. It’s the process I miss. I miss watching an idea take form under the needles and solving the bugs that always crop up.
Just like I miss getting to know the characters for the first time, watching the story arc unravel and spool out to the final scene
No comments:
Post a Comment