WIP's

Too many items on the needles. Too many papers to grade. Too many items to read, review, or write for my degree. Too many WIP's in every part of life!

I shift from being excited by all I am doing to being overwhelmed by all that I've started.
I'm working on the little moss-stitch dress from "Special Knits" for my niece. I've got my Shoalwater Shawl partially done, but can't figure out how to include the yarn with bits of color that I wanted to carry along intermittently. I can't get it to look right.
I've pulled out a top that I'd very much like to finish (started last fall) but I need the time to pick out my errors in the neckline and work my way back into the pattern. I've started a lovely ribbed shell (from Chick-knits) and need to get back to that, but want to finish the dress first. [sigh]. I am, perhaps, a little impatient at the moment. Just nameless gnawing anxiety. But this seems to be one of those periods in the pattern of life that has me running so fast I'm in serious danger of forgetting to enjoy what I'm doing!

So I've scheduled time for myself -- both structured and unstructured. I've also started to limit my "multi-tasking" -- sometimes it's NOT better to work on two things at once. Allowing myself to concentrate on ONE task at a time, for fun or work, brings some of the joy back to it and removes some of the needless "frantic flavoring" that I've been tasting in all tasks of late.
A friend from KR wrote me recently about her vision of heaven as a beautiful puzzle, in which she had to be herself and maintain her proper shape to fit her section of the puzzle, but there were people on the other side, completely different from herself, whose edges would not fit with hers, but who were just as essential to the puzzle, and to the beauty of the picture as she; they too were required to keep their shapes to fit in their portion of the picture. And though we could not see it, all is necessary for the whole.

It's a lovely picture. And I've been contemplating it as I knit, wondering if life at large, and my life specifically can be represented that way. I think so, if the puzzle is extended through time. I am not who I was, though who I was, was necessary to my life at the time. My shapes and soul have changed, my mind, my responses, my ideas of myself and others. I'm learning not to try to force myself to accept those whose edges don't match mine, but at times I feel like a child's learning puzzle, with the edges curled and worn, rounded and peeling with learning and struggle. With all my WIP's, I feel fragmented and distressed by it. But sorting is necessary. I've never liked working on puzzles much, but I do it by assembling chunks as I find the bits that match. Eventually I can recognize how the sections go together. But I still have a child's unholy glee at crumbling the picture into pieces again; and as a child I preferred to re-make it as I wished once I've seen what the designer did. This makes for awkward bits and odd combinations, to be sure. But it was fun!