The State of the Projects
(for, y'know, accountability et. al.)
It’s been a while since I updated y’all on what I’ve been doing and such.
This is largely because when J announced our impending move (and its wibbly dates that could be in September or could be, like, tomorrow), my brain had to switch modes from Do the Things I Want to Get Done to HOLY CRAP HOW DO I PACK ALL THIS STUFF.
I’m still sort of in the latter, there. But I think I’m about to a place where I’ve got everything packed that we’re not going to use until September1. There’s still quite a few things that we’ll be able to part ways with once winter’s done with us here in Washington, since we won’t need snow gear and such in San Antonio…but that’s a problem for Future Me to deal with anyway.
Let’s just say that things are pretty much on hold with everything.
I’ve packed the encyclopedias, since I don’t have the time to work on the ABC Project until post-move. I also likely won’t have unpacked materials for some of it, since I very much need to pack all the Magpie Book supplies and focus instead on listing the ones that are already done. (I’ve made so many in the past six months. So. Many. There are boxes of them, and more boxes of hardcover/softcover creative sketchbooks that I bound last Fall. It’s a little overwhelming, TBH.)
So that’s on the shelf until after the move, and I’m okay with that.
Pretty much every ongoing project has gone in that same direction for the time being. It’s more important to have things packed than it is to continue them.
And lest you think that that means I’m not doing anything…
Of course it doesn’t2. :)
I’ve got a lot of mostly-done things or materials to do things sitting here that I’ve been meaning to get to when I have a minute to do so. We’re talking things like a giant stack of papers I meant to gelli print so I’d have a stash of them when I need them. Giant sheets of paper that I meant to bind into sketchbooks. Fabric scraps I’ve painstakingly saved to make into talismans and cantrips. Long, LONG lists of games to finally write up, or that are half written and just need illustrations and playtests. A whole closet floor’s worth of yarn separated into colors that I meant to weave up into freeform-ish yardage, presumably for book covers later. All the clay stuff since I very VERY much want to dig as much wild Washington-state clay and process it before we move, so I can stick my hands in dirt from home when I’m stranded in the desert.
Somehow, I think I can do ALL of this before packing up the results and/or the leftovers3.
So I’m replacing generative projects with remedial making, essentially, all on a ticking clock before we have to skedaddle southbound.
I feel as if this way may lie madness, but it’s not stopping me from trying.
Seriously, though, I’m not completely delusional.
For a change. Ahem. Just saying.
My first priority is listing all the complete stuff for sale4. I need to move as much of it out of my house as humanly possible. The less to move, the better…since right now my project crap would take up a good portion of a Uhaul.
Then, I get to decide what I can reasonably get done this summer (if we get that long here), and pack up everything else to be done over in desertville. It’s hard for me to admit the fact that I don’t have infinite time, and with this being potentially sooner rather than later, I’ve got some personally-agonizing decisions to make soon. Can I realistically finish weaving sixty-seven billionty clumps of yarn before September? Maybe if I stop doing things like sleeping and eating and paying attention to the dog, but even then, it’s dicey. I’d be better served doing a couple more warps’ worth and then packing the rest of it in vacuum-storage bags and letting it go for now5.
Same with all the crap, er…very valuable materials I’ve got for all the magpie books I want to finish before we move. They’re time-intensive, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll take a day or two and make up a bunch of clusters and pockets and use-up-the-stash-type stuff and then pack all of that, too.
I could go on here, but you get my drift: the main project I’ve got going on right now is deciding whether to continue all the stuff I like doing, pack up any that I can bear not doing until post-move, and ditching things that won’t be a good fit once we’re established elsewhere.
This is surprisingly difficult.
I'm usually not married to most physical things. The tornado sort of reinforced that everything’s temporary anyway, so I don’t need a bunch of physical stuff to be happy.
In theory.
In practice, I really like my piles of creative stuff. It’s like possibilities wrapped up in projects. So it’s hard to cut off those possibilities prematurely, just in case I want to realize some of that potential6.
I need to remember that even if all this stuff lit with spontaneous flame tomorrow, I’d be able to Make Stuff with what was left, and that I’m a grown up with grown up money and can re-buy most things I’d need, anyway.
My project(s), then, is managing projects.
At least for now. Evaluating them, finishing some parts of them, packing them.
It’s a very meta quest, really7.
But that’s where I am, and why I’m not really updating y’all about the encyclopedia project et. al..
It’ll all be back after October-ish. Or, at least, the survivors of the Project Hunger Games will be.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Or, I’m hoping, if we don’t use a thing between now and the move, that we might be able to let go of it. My inner hoarder screams loudly at that, though.
I mean, have you even met me?
Oh, delusion, thy name is Projects.
I say “priority” as if I’ve done anything in service of that particular goal. I’ve worked on the other stuff, but the idea of listing everything is so daunting it’s giving me a twitch in one eye.
And possibly longer than “for now”. I’m not sure how much I’m going to want to be around thick-ass wool when the average summer temps in SA are literally three digits high. Winter tends to be around late Spring/early Summer temps here, too, so…I may have to just play nice with reality for a change and think about getting rid of the rest.
And for the more existential correlation to this: I’m realizing I’m getting to an age where all things are NOT as possible as they were. I’m probably never going to do some of the things I thought I wanted to, because doors are actually shutting. (ex. With my goony Igor Foot, it’s possible that walking will continue to be difficult for me. So much for my flaneuse dreams or hiking wishes or, for that matter, just walking around downtown for fun.) I need new dreams that match what opportunities I still have, but letting go of the old ones is still remarkably hard.
Meta as in the form of the word prior to the Zuckerberg Invasion. The thing ABOUT the thing. The diary about diaries, the project about projects. Not the superlarge corporate social media monopoly.