One of the things I notice is that I alternate widely between wanting to work on long-term projects, and wanting to work on things that are quick, that get done fast.

Not exactly instant gratification, because almost nothing you can make is truly instant gratification in the sense that our culture's developed it (you can now order pizza online. I suppose the idea is you do it as you're gearing up to leave the office for the day so that, barring any kind of traffic jams, you will arrive home at the very minute the delivery person does).

But I find I have a need for small but tangible successes. And sometimes, being able to say, "I'm up to the armhole decreases on the sweater front" just isn't enough.

I think that's partly why I like making toys, or socks - they are comparatively fast. (Except right now three of the four pairs of socks I am working on are lace socks on either size 1 or size 0 needles - not so fast. And the current toy is the crocheted Totoro...and when I was looking online for some pointers, I found that one blogger had listed it as a "project obituary" because they couldn't take all the single crochet. [compared to some of the other crochet critters I've done, the Totoro is going to be HUGE. It's already got more stitches per row than any of the other patterns I've used, and I'm not yet half done with the body])

I especially notice when I'm going through difficulties with research that I need the quick-gratification projects - again, I think it's that need to feel "competent" at something. (I tend to get too involved with my work. Somehow I need to teach myself that my research papers are not who I am, or at least not exclusively who I am.)

I guess it's a personality thing - I think about all of the researchers (and not just the big names like Darwin or Einstein) who worked on a single idea for years, slowly building up data to support it, and then finally published it. Did they have other projects going on at the same time? Did they immerse themselves in family when the equations just wouldn't work out or the words wouldn't come? (Well, Darwin, I suppose - he seemed to have been fairly close to his wife and kids. Einstein, from what I've read, not so much). Or are there people who are just able to work on something for years and believe in it so much that they know it will work out, and not entertain any doubt of having "wasted" that time on a wrong idea?

For me, it kills me to feel like I've wasted time on something that doesn't work, something that's not publishable, etc.

Which is also probably why I don't do so much designing. With socks, I understand the basic anatomy and it's comparatively simple to plug in stitch patterns and get something that works. But I'd hate to spend months (which is what it takes for me) fiddling with a sweater design and then find it didn't fit, or it looked ugly, or something.

I don't know whether it's more a playing-it-safe or a recognition of the potential psychological cost (and yes, there'd be a cost) of all that "wasted" time.

So I work with established patterns most of the time, making a few small modifications here and there, or I use a different yarn than recommended (And I'm frankly amazed that a yarn shop would do what Diann experienced: treat her like some kind of a heretic for wanting to substitute yarn).

And I tell myself that I should feel that creating something beautiful and useful should be enough, that I should just ignore the people (which I occasionally see on KR and in other places) who sort of roll their eyes when they hear someone's using, gasp, a pattern they didn't write themselves.

But you know? There's a big legacy in my life of people telling me all the "great" things I would do. I was a good student growing up. I was more creative as a kid and teenager than I am now. People always told me how I would go far. (In the joke "most likely" awards senior year of high school, I was one of two people voted most likely to discover a cure for AIDS. Joking, yes, but that still tells me a bit of what people thought of me.)

And so sometimes I look at my life and I go: why am I not doing more? Why haven't I published more papers, tried more grant proposals? Why haven't I designed all kinds of cool stuff?

I mean, I guess I'm doing OKAY, when I look back at my c.v., for example. But it's still hard to live up to it when all of your growing-up years were spent being told how far you'd go, how smart you were, etc., etc. (On the other hand: I suppose that's a lot better than being told that you'll never amount to anything).

And then again: all of us who are leading hardworking lawabiding lives do have a "horrible warning" (as opposed to a "good example" - the old saying, "If you can't be a good example, be a horrible warning"?) of a certain individual who was just released from prison back into the flashbulb world of the paparazzi. Maybe it's a horrible thing to do, but I look at the papers I HAVE published and go, well, that's one useful thing SHE hasn't done.

(Yes. I am using both Einstein and P. Hilton as comparison points. I need to find some more realistic comparison points).

So I don't know. Sometimes the blessing of a longer-term project is being able to lose oneself in it. Now that I have the data I need, I can go back to working on that paper. It will take a while - there's a fair amount to be done - but at least I know for part of it what I need to do. And I need to give myself permission to take some time to work on this.

I also went back to the Landscape Shawl last night (that's the picture at the top of this essay). I'm up to the third pattern (reverse stockinette), just barely. I think I'm going to need to try to find a 60", size-six circular somewhere because the shawl's fast growing to the point where I can't stretch it out nicely while I'm working on it.

When I can slip into the mode of being able to work on a longer-term project, without needing something to be done NOW NOW NOW, it is pleasant. It's nice to feel the wool between my fingers, to watch the way the colors stripe or pool (and you know, it's slightly different in each stitch section? The seed stitch looks different from the garter stitch and I'm guessing the reverse stockinette will look different too)

(I also have to admit I wonder if my shift to needing things done NOW NOW NOW is part of the quality of blogging - and especially, blogging now that I have a flickr account. I want to have stuff to show people. And I'm not crazy about showing in-progress shots of stuff; you've seen one half-finished sweater back, you've seen them all, I tend to feel.)

Then again - my feeling a need to get things finished may just be the result of what my life - what so many of our lives - has become: a juggling act. Where one of the greatest desires is to be able to put one of the balls DOWN. I like being able to mentally pin a "finished" label on things (which is why loose ends - I don't mean loose ends in knitting, I mean figurative loose ends, like when you need someone to return a call so you can finish something up, and they don't - bug me so much). I've even been guilty a few times of prematurely pinning that "finished" label on, and not totally completing something. (Which is also a problem with some of the papers I write: it's a real effort, a real forcing, to make myself go through ONE LAST TIME and proofread, really closely proofread, the darn thing, and also check for stuff like that everything in the Literature Cited is actually cited somewhere in the text).

So I don't know. I guess the answer is to keep a balance of things (Isn't that always the answer?). Have a few projects close enough to completion to keep me happy, but also to not give in so much to that demon of needing it "done" and to permit myself to work on the longer-term projects - the quilt in the frame, the shawls, the sweaters.

Does anyone else feel like this? Like, if you don't have ANYTHING close to being finished, if everything's midstream with a minimum of weeks to go on it, you sort of lose interest and just want something to be DONE?