Leftovers

Post-Thanksgiving: the fridge is littered with Tupperware containers filled with slices of turkey, lasagna (yes, my family has lasagna on our Thanksgiving menu), and various other remnants of the holiday feast.  It seems like a lot, but we’ll get through it all and the fridge return to some state of order.  It’s the leftovers from my life that I often worry about.

When I say leftovers from my life, I mean old projects, mostly writing-related, that have gone unfinished.  I have a few stories that I have not edited as much as I should have, as well as story ideas that I have never put to paper.  Or Word document, as the case may be.  Common excuses I’ve used, which I'm sure others use when in similar situations, is that I don’t have time or that I don’t know how to get started.  The solution to the first problem is simply that one needs to make the time.  In anything, one will have time conflicts and must learn how to navigate those if they want to be successful.  I’m working on that right now, trying to schedule specific time slots to write.  The second excuse can often be tied to writer’s block in my case, which is even worse because of how disheartening it is; it makes it so tempting to just give up.  The only solution I can come up with is that sometimes you just need to make yourself start.  You may not have the process as planned out as you like, but sometimes you just need to get moving to be inspired.  In both these cases, the solution has to do with getting yourself moving, something you need to do to get over any problem.

Besides my stories, another leftover are my poems.  They are in better shape than my stories in terms of how far I can take them, but I have not sought out publishing outlets for all of them.  This is not a project unfinished but a project left undone, the only type of leftover more tragic.  It’s really just a loss of momentum when something like this occurs with anyone’s project; we were on the right track, but then we didn’t follow through the rest of the way, perhaps because we felt tired after the previous work or scared that our finished product isn’t good enough.  So, for anyone who has encountered this type of situation, I can only say that no matter how close to finished we appear, we must continue to push forward, making sure we don’t lose our momentum, or we will always fall short of where we want to end.

I think there’s another reason why leftovers can accumulate that needs to be discussed: we get focused on new things and our old projects get shoved to the side.  Now I’m not saying that we should never consider tabling old projects for new ones we’re excited about; I just think we shouldn’t fall into a pattern with it.  Just jumping from one thing to the next causes the same loss of momentum described earlier, so it must be considered a bad habit to get into; if you can’t stick with one thing, you’ll never get anything done.

I urge everyone, myself included, to start tending to any leftovers you may have.  There may be some that you decide aren’t truly worth the time, but I’m willing to bet there are a few you want to see through even if they look daunting (perhaps that’s the very reason you set them aside in the first place).  Whatever reason you may have had for tabling them, be sure to make some time to return to them.  If you don’t, then these dreams will spoil, just like the leftovers in the fridge if they’re ignored for too long, making your decision for you.  So now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some other work to do.