I started this year with the task of clearing up my office. Most of the time so far devoted to this job has been spent standing in the middle of the room, staring at a jumble of stuff, in a kind of paralysis of indecision. About one-eighth of the time is spent actively sorting items. A glorious, free-feeling tenth has involved throwing things in the bin. About a quarter of it has been existential despair.
Questions that have arisen:
- Why do I have a shelf full of beads, when I don't make jewellery and indeed do not wear it?
- Will I ever finish half the projects that I started, and given the finiteness of life, should I?
One major reason I don't finish projects is that so much of my time is spent sorting through the crap that I've collected for other projects.
I've come to the conclusion that having too many craft materials is worse than having none. You have no idea what materials you do have, so they may as well not be there, apart from the clutter they create and the nagging guilt that you're not using them.
Hoarding is a kind of procrastination. I remember a Radio 4 programme about procrastination, and they were saying that procrastination isn't at all simply not doing something, it's an active, agonising avoidance of doing something. Because procrastinators are afraid that when they carry out the task, the result will not be good enough. Keeping projects and tasks in that perfect state of ideas is our (ultimately doomed) way of protecting ourselves from disappointment.
Just as the procrastinator collects years of unused, wasted hours around him, the hoarder-procrastinator sits surrounded by fabrics and beads and half-finished stories.
Every year I press cherry leaves between sheets of sugar paper, and then forget I've done this. Cherry leaves in Autumn demand some kind of response, they are so beautifully bright. I think I have a notion that I'm not enjoying them as much as I should do, so I collect them and try to preserve them so I can enjoy them later. They never retain that brightness when dried - they are often still red or yellow or soft green, but they've lost that cheery interestingness. And then I feel bad throwing them out. The best thing I could do would be to catch one still alive, as it were, and paint or draw it then and there.
