Trying To Finish

When I did the Belbin psychometric test to find out which team role I play most effectively, I remember less about my results and more of a jealous feeling related to people who were “Completer Finishers”.

Everything tidy and settled is beyond me and consequently annoying.

I think I was a “Plant” or a “Resource Investigator”, I can’t remember which. I did consider looking it up before writing this but I didn’t get around to it.

When you have a low boredom threshold combined with a childlike fascination in what feels like everything it’s a perfect storm for inefficiency.

I Googled “focus is boring” but all it returned were suggestions for ways to stay focused when doing a boring task.

What if staying in one place, on one task, and being focused is what you find most boring of all?

I can’t read one book at a time. Currently, I have four on the go and then, because of a tweet by someone I don’t follow and whose opinion ought not to matter at all,  I bought “This Is How You Win The Time War,” and now I have five.

Waking from a disturbing dream at 4.38 am I am relieved to find that I have not murdered two people I didn’t know and rather haphazardly attempted to bury their dismembered bodies in shallow graves, tiring towards the end of the task and failing to finish.

I lie awake trying to understand the meaning of my dream as the early light begins to seep in through the blinds.

Burying something is an indication of something repressed, an unwillingness to face it.

On the bedside table, next to my camera with film half-finished from a project I began in the spring, and a book about trees I’ve been reading for longer than I care to admit is my copy of “This Is How You Win The Time War.”

I’m not enjoying it.

It’s linguistically over-complicated for my tastes and I’m not sure I understand the characters let alone feel anything for them.

I keep trying to tell myself that it’s OK not to finish it but I can’t seem to let it go.

Not finishing something I find difficult feels like an intolerable failure.

I don’t finish things I enjoy because I don’t want them to end, and I often don’t finish what I have created because I’ll have to let it out into the world, where it can be judged.

But finishing things that feel like a punishment while I’m in the midst of them appears to be no problem at all.