Staring Into the Abyss

Have you ever started a project that warmed your soul like golden rays of sunshine each time you made progress until the fateful day, your progress stutters to a halt and those golden rays get replaced by the inky blackness of despair? When days grow into weeks, months, maybe years said project remains untouched, a barrier of despair forms as thick as tar you have to wade through to pick back up where you left off? Just me?

It’s been so long since I wrote a post on my website that as I sat down to write this very post, I spent the first so-and-so minutes staring at a blank page and let the blackness of my despair wash over me. Despair at all the time that passed without an update; all the missed opportunities of cool topics and events that occurred and racked up this past year.

Last month, once I finished knitting my last gift sock, I finally deemed it was time to pick back up my temperature blanket, my Big Idea for 2019. I made so much great progress until I got hit with a whopping depression bat in August. In fact, I hadn’t knitted anything until I decided to fulfill my promise to gift my three friends with a pair of socks each for helping me organize my yarn – a monumental task.

I found my blanket project complete with the squares I already knit so far, when I searched for an image on my phone related to the project and came across another saved image:

Why, thank you Past Me, for saving this inspirational quote. I had no idea at the time I desperately needed this.

I also should mention last fall I experienced another pivotal moment. While despairing over my knitting, I rediscovered my writing. I picked up a book I left unfinished for an age and read it from beginning to end — or rather, where I stopped right before the major climactic ending. It was nail-biting! I couldn’t stop reading once I began, and ended up pulling an all-niter to finish it.

One hundred thousand plus words in its unedited glory, and here I was gobsmacked over my own craft. A craft I knew I lacked any particular talent in. I even remember the days I slaved over this piece, thinking the entire time it’s no good and all for naught.

For 2020, I promise myself I will pick up where I left off on each of these projects and keep going.