I've got finishing on my mind. Finishing, stopping, and even quitting. I'm not sure why calling something done gives me anxiety; I just want to work it and work it forever. I think I need rituals (like seeing my articles in print is a great completion ritual) to let myself know a project's done. Although I heard that as Z.Z. Packer was reading from her story "Brownies" a couple years ago at Litquake, she pulled out a pencil and made an edit in her (acclaimed, published) book.
Unfinished projects are the baby birds of the psyche. They gape and gulp with their naked blue-tinged heads and demand you fly back and back to their nests.
And quitting: I think it's an art. It's not something to do when you're facing a new challenge and are challenged, or are mid-commitment, but more like when the horse is dead. Or the goldfish. I once was about to put fish medicine into my tank when I decided to poke the sick fish and discovered that its whole belly was cavernous and gone. Which is why it was looking lethargic and milky-colored. Not long after that, I quit trying to keep fish. I dumped them into a pond where they soon bred themselves into a giant school of goldfish and lived much more happily without me.
I wish I could talk to my would-have-been neighbors and ask them about their decision to quit this project:
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