no time like the present

How do I start back at my new blog after being gone for two months? I feel very removed from it and without words. Me? I am never without words...so my friends and husband would say.

I consider myself a "recovering perfectionist" and I can analyze something till the cows come home. I can fall into a procrastinating trap of more thinking and planning than doing. Apparently that is because we (RP's as I call them) expect the end result to be perfect and if we allow ourselves one minute to consider that it might not be, we will use that thinking and planning to keep us from finishing and never having to face that we did not do it perfect. Oh, the web we weave in our own minds.

It is tough to get back to something when I have been away from it for a long time. It seems like the more I think about how that could happen and what I can do to prevent it the next time or the logistic's of how I will pick it back up again and keep it going, are all my own brain's stall tactics. There are things like a book that I started, got distracted and never finished, a project I had started like my old quilt tops from a year ago that have never been quilted, or most recent picking up my blog. They all hang around to remind me that at times, I do not finish things.

When I started quilting with an old friend, her mother, who was a master quilter, told me "Wendy, if you are going to be a perfectionist about quilting, don't start or you will drive yourself crazy". I told myself that I wouldn't do that but looking back on all my work that is not completed I can see that at times it is exactly what I have done. I think that when I begin a project, I have already given myself permission to not finish it. Somehow that seems like a healthy way to look at things. However, I might abuse that good mental health at times. This thinking then allows me to procrastinate just enough to not get it done. All so I can avoid my ultimate disappointment... it isn't perfect.

All those started and not completed projects can create a lot of guilt & disappointment. It seems like many people I know (except my DH - dear husband) have some project they started and never finished. Yes, there are some things that were a bad idea in the first place or as we get into it further, we find that out. Then a choice needs to be made to let go of them. Completing them might be a further waste of precious time. If that is true the guilt has to go with it. There is always the option to give it away or tear it apart. Either way stop it and go on. However, if it is a good project and should be finished, well....no time like the present.

This happened to me during this last two months. I had two season specific projects. One was a Halloween wall hanging and the other a fall table runner for Thanksgiving. Because of being down with a bad cold and then the flu, the Pumpkins in the Yard wasn't going to be completed until after Halloween. I liked the project and decided that it would be finished this year, not next. That might put off the Thanksgiving Pheasants which in turn might not be on the table for Thanksgiving dinner. But I had made a resolution to get them done before going on to quilt my Christmas quilt that has been pinned together and ready for machine quilting...since last year.

I am a work in progress in my quilting and every quilt is a learning opportunity. I am not perfect...only God is. There is real value in completing a good project and there is no time like the present to just get it done. So I did. Here is the "Pumpkins in the Yard" wall hanging.

...make every moment count ~ Wendy