This was my first week back at work in the New Year, and it was a doozy. I’m teaching Monday through Wednesday (three courses!), and then neck-deep in other projects the rest of the week, while trying to make sure I schedule in something called … What is it, what’s the word … Ff…ree? Free time? I d’know, sounds fake.
But! That said, an uncomfortable realization I’ve had about myself recently is that I tend not to count things as “work” unless they’re completed tasks. This is … terrible? This way lies (LIES!) feelings of unworth, inadequacy, general badness, burnout, trying to grind myself into paste to feel like I’ve finished something because otherwise no work was done. (Let us draw a blind for now over any implied erroneous equation of work and worth. That’s a whole essay for elsewhen.)
So I’d love to know: what did you work on this week without finishing? It can be literally anything, as little or as much detail as you please. Let us recognize our work-unfinished* and celebrate it and each other.
*Funny how “work-unfinished” feels so different from “work-in-progress”, isn’t it? When they’re so often the same.
An outline, a novel, and allllll the SFWA work. I've learned to make an X on finished tasks and a \ on tasks that I've touched. It allows me to feel like I am still making progress.
My newsletter. It takes me about a day to write, but with starting back on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday in Bavaria), starting a new routine of breaking my writing day with a walk, and getting a book deal for my first short story collection, I’ve been a bit distracted.
I started knitting a blanket! It’s much too big of a project to finishing RIGHT AWAY which is V good for me, but also itches like a healing scrape. It’s orange! And for my SIL! And I love it already!
The story I'm working on for the Silk & Steel anthology. There was one (1) day of sunshine this week and I think it accounted for like 80% of the progress I made...
I handed in proposals for my next book, and not working on a novel feels like wandering aimlessly through a huge empty house. there should be something there - a beat up couch, even - but there isn't anything. So naturally I'm desperately sprouting story ideas that I'm not going to write.
I got part way through some novel revisions and some audio work. Still a long way to go, but I like this exercise in appreciating the steps along the way to completion. It's nice the stop and realize that the increments count, too. :)
Ugh, I so relate to the work-unfinished thing. My solution right now is to just be more granular about my tasks so that I can point to the parts that I _did_ finish. I've built that into part of my week -- looking back at and giving myself credit for the things that I did -- because my tendency is to only look at the things I have left to do.
Anyway. I finished drafting chapter one of the heart novel I've been ruminating on for the better part of a year now. It's messy and needs work and (insert more qualifiers attached to that accomplishment), but it's on paper! And I'm so close to having a complete outline-y thing for a short story I'm working on.
I keep working on my novella, but it’s like I’m always four scenes from the end. The last three work days I revised the same scene three times. But also each time, I learned something more about what the end will look like. Still, frustrating. Why can’t I write it and THEN see what it’s supposed to look like and then FIX it??? Am I skipping a step or adding it?
Also, dishes. Work unfinished. Even when you’ve just finished them.
I work at a software company where every code check-in has to be reviewed by someone else, and there are lots of go-rounds on discussing design documents, so “incremental progress” is pretty much the default for me at work. I’m happy with the progress my team is making this week on our designs, and I’ve helped a couple of people solve obscure problems as well.
Granularity is good, and can be refined beyond the task level. In my project management days I developed a system where tasks had a small number of stages: Not Started, Started, Partly Done, Half Done, Mostly Done, and Done. It's pretty easy to fool ourselves with abstract numerical estimates but a bit harder with these fairly intuitive categories. This system also had the advantage of giving a feeling of accomplishment, of finishing something, as things were moved from one stage to the next.
For me, this week's unfinishment (maybe this year's unfinishment) is a weird long narrative blank verse thing (likely to run maybe 3000-5000 lines, currently at about 1200) that's a riff on Romeo and Juliet, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
The thing that writing "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham" taught me is that my narrative poetry process is pretty prose-like: initial draft is just getting it all splatted out on the page, then rework and rework and rework until it has some shape and sense. I used to be much more of a "perfected page" poet, I think in part because it helped me feel like I was "finishing" things.
I’m fighting a round with pneumonia and haven’t been to work a single day this week. It frustrates me, but also I have to be kind to myself and understand that I couldn’t work right now anyway.
I've been doing kind of the opposite: working on multiple projects but never deeming any of them as ready for other people to start using. There's always one more feature I could add, one more way in which I'm not totally sure performance will 100% match the system it's replacing, and so on. I end up putting these almost-complete projects aside as the last bit of work is always the most annoying... but this lack of completion and delivery has been wearing me down so this week I'm trying to go back to a bunch of projects in this "not quite ready to ship" state and closing the final gaps.
I came here from a mutual FB friend; What I worked on, unfinished, this week, is the second in what will unfold somehow as a series of postcard-sized handwoven tapestries as diary, begun this year. Last week's looks like the fog rolling up and nibbling on the ridgeline of the coastal mountains from where I live in San Jose, CA; this week's is much more abstract and has fire season thoughts & colors, both in Northern California and in Australia.
The second piece of fanfic I've ever started. It's a detective story set in the Star Wars universe where the detective is a Hutt and his assistant is a protocol droid. There will be cameos.
(The first one was how John Wilkes Booth used a hippo to assassinate Abraham Lincoln a month earlier than it happened in our timeline.)
A dissertation, a job application, taking down Christmas decorations, working on a story...feels like all I am is work unfinished these days. I definitely identify with finding it hard to let anything “count” till it’s done, so I really appreciate this thread.
I am literally trying to work on this this year! This week I have been working on saying "let's continue work on this project tomorrow!" When the clock rolls to 5-5.30
Two things: I am designing a cross stitch of some dear friend’s wedding vows, and am feeling the urge to FINISH, but I also want it to be *wonderful* and that works better with a little stepping away and percolating.
The other is an ongoing process of “what are the 5-7 things that are essences to my heart” (inspired by MRK). I know a few: serenity, novelty, creation, but what’s the right word to describe how I love helping folks be valued, seen, lifted up? (Kindness? Validation? Enliven? Nourish?) How about how much something is heightened by being shared? (Collaboration? Togetherness?) It’s SUCH an interesting exercise, and there process and introspection is certainly almost more valuable than the actual end result. (But I would love suggestions if anyone has any!)
Tried and failed to sort out some SQL joins. My SQL skills are like my Spanish. I can ask where the bathroom is and how long until dinner, and the rest is just me saying "Donde?" over and over.
I started a talk about web accessibility, and about how our conversations about it are so stunted because we forget/refuse to talk about the ableism in our work teams. It is far from done! But at least that outline file isn't empty anymore.
I hit a roadblock in the gay eldritch harp repair story I've been tinkering with, so this week has been largely devoted to going through things in my storage unit to organize it and winnow out the chaff. It counts as productivity! It's useful! So long as I keep telling myself that!
This sounds like my work life. I’m a program manager in a field where the length of the overall projects often exceeds one’s tenure in a given position. But we passed a review for one portion of the effort this week. Getting used to not having a “deliverable” at regular intervals was the hardest thing about this type of work for me. Some days are just a string of meetings to decide what should get done by the next meeting. And I worked on a knitting project that will probably take a few more weeks to finish.
I didn't manage to finish the short story I've been working on. My goal was to be done today so I could reach out to an editor about cost to review the piece. I was able to get some other things done, I just ran out of spoons and hours for this one this week.
I also didn't succeed in finishing Seanan McGuire's Middlegame this week. That book is causing me such sorrow I can't pick it back up. It's so beautiful I'm dying to know what comes next but my heart is caught in the knot of yarn Middlegame is tugging at and trying to knit a sweater of angst from.
An outline, a novel, and allllll the SFWA work. I've learned to make an X on finished tasks and a \ on tasks that I've touched. It allows me to feel like I am still making progress.
My newsletter. It takes me about a day to write, but with starting back on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday in Bavaria), starting a new routine of breaking my writing day with a walk, and getting a book deal for my first short story collection, I’ve been a bit distracted.
I started knitting a blanket! It’s much too big of a project to finishing RIGHT AWAY which is V good for me, but also itches like a healing scrape. It’s orange! And for my SIL! And I love it already!
I worked on my PhD and started to code a dataset for a joint article. Both gloriously unfinished but I am satisfied with my progress!
The story I'm working on for the Silk & Steel anthology. There was one (1) day of sunshine this week and I think it accounted for like 80% of the progress I made...
I handed in proposals for my next book, and not working on a novel feels like wandering aimlessly through a huge empty house. there should be something there - a beat up couch, even - but there isn't anything. So naturally I'm desperately sprouting story ideas that I'm not going to write.
I got part way through some novel revisions and some audio work. Still a long way to go, but I like this exercise in appreciating the steps along the way to completion. It's nice the stop and realize that the increments count, too. :)
Like, everything in my life?! I feel that everything I do is a work in progress. Including myself.
Ugh, I so relate to the work-unfinished thing. My solution right now is to just be more granular about my tasks so that I can point to the parts that I _did_ finish. I've built that into part of my week -- looking back at and giving myself credit for the things that I did -- because my tendency is to only look at the things I have left to do.
Anyway. I finished drafting chapter one of the heart novel I've been ruminating on for the better part of a year now. It's messy and needs work and (insert more qualifiers attached to that accomplishment), but it's on paper! And I'm so close to having a complete outline-y thing for a short story I'm working on.
Slogging my way through dayjob tasks and wedding-dress tasks alike.
I keep working on my novella, but it’s like I’m always four scenes from the end. The last three work days I revised the same scene three times. But also each time, I learned something more about what the end will look like. Still, frustrating. Why can’t I write it and THEN see what it’s supposed to look like and then FIX it??? Am I skipping a step or adding it?
Also, dishes. Work unfinished. Even when you’ve just finished them.
I work at a software company where every code check-in has to be reviewed by someone else, and there are lots of go-rounds on discussing design documents, so “incremental progress” is pretty much the default for me at work. I’m happy with the progress my team is making this week on our designs, and I’ve helped a couple of people solve obscure problems as well.
Granularity is good, and can be refined beyond the task level. In my project management days I developed a system where tasks had a small number of stages: Not Started, Started, Partly Done, Half Done, Mostly Done, and Done. It's pretty easy to fool ourselves with abstract numerical estimates but a bit harder with these fairly intuitive categories. This system also had the advantage of giving a feeling of accomplishment, of finishing something, as things were moved from one stage to the next.
For me, this week's unfinishment (maybe this year's unfinishment) is a weird long narrative blank verse thing (likely to run maybe 3000-5000 lines, currently at about 1200) that's a riff on Romeo and Juliet, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
The thing that writing "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham" taught me is that my narrative poetry process is pretty prose-like: initial draft is just getting it all splatted out on the page, then rework and rework and rework until it has some shape and sense. I used to be much more of a "perfected page" poet, I think in part because it helped me feel like I was "finishing" things.
Naruto fanfiction. Because sometimes you just gotta write about ninjas and feelings and, uh, the long term effects of sending children into war
I’m fighting a round with pneumonia and haven’t been to work a single day this week. It frustrates me, but also I have to be kind to myself and understand that I couldn’t work right now anyway.
I've been doing kind of the opposite: working on multiple projects but never deeming any of them as ready for other people to start using. There's always one more feature I could add, one more way in which I'm not totally sure performance will 100% match the system it's replacing, and so on. I end up putting these almost-complete projects aside as the last bit of work is always the most annoying... but this lack of completion and delivery has been wearing me down so this week I'm trying to go back to a bunch of projects in this "not quite ready to ship" state and closing the final gaps.
I came here from a mutual FB friend; What I worked on, unfinished, this week, is the second in what will unfold somehow as a series of postcard-sized handwoven tapestries as diary, begun this year. Last week's looks like the fog rolling up and nibbling on the ridgeline of the coastal mountains from where I live in San Jose, CA; this week's is much more abstract and has fire season thoughts & colors, both in Northern California and in Australia.
The second piece of fanfic I've ever started. It's a detective story set in the Star Wars universe where the detective is a Hutt and his assistant is a protocol droid. There will be cameos.
(The first one was how John Wilkes Booth used a hippo to assassinate Abraham Lincoln a month earlier than it happened in our timeline.)
A dissertation, a job application, taking down Christmas decorations, working on a story...feels like all I am is work unfinished these days. I definitely identify with finding it hard to let anything “count” till it’s done, so I really appreciate this thread.
I am literally trying to work on this this year! This week I have been working on saying "let's continue work on this project tomorrow!" When the clock rolls to 5-5.30
Two things: I am designing a cross stitch of some dear friend’s wedding vows, and am feeling the urge to FINISH, but I also want it to be *wonderful* and that works better with a little stepping away and percolating.
The other is an ongoing process of “what are the 5-7 things that are essences to my heart” (inspired by MRK). I know a few: serenity, novelty, creation, but what’s the right word to describe how I love helping folks be valued, seen, lifted up? (Kindness? Validation? Enliven? Nourish?) How about how much something is heightened by being shared? (Collaboration? Togetherness?) It’s SUCH an interesting exercise, and there process and introspection is certainly almost more valuable than the actual end result. (But I would love suggestions if anyone has any!)
Tried and failed to sort out some SQL joins. My SQL skills are like my Spanish. I can ask where the bathroom is and how long until dinner, and the rest is just me saying "Donde?" over and over.
I started a talk about web accessibility, and about how our conversations about it are so stunted because we forget/refuse to talk about the ableism in our work teams. It is far from done! But at least that outline file isn't empty anymore.
I hit a roadblock in the gay eldritch harp repair story I've been tinkering with, so this week has been largely devoted to going through things in my storage unit to organize it and winnow out the chaff. It counts as productivity! It's useful! So long as I keep telling myself that!
This sounds like my work life. I’m a program manager in a field where the length of the overall projects often exceeds one’s tenure in a given position. But we passed a review for one portion of the effort this week. Getting used to not having a “deliverable” at regular intervals was the hardest thing about this type of work for me. Some days are just a string of meetings to decide what should get done by the next meeting. And I worked on a knitting project that will probably take a few more weeks to finish.
I didn't manage to finish the short story I've been working on. My goal was to be done today so I could reach out to an editor about cost to review the piece. I was able to get some other things done, I just ran out of spoons and hours for this one this week.
I also didn't succeed in finishing Seanan McGuire's Middlegame this week. That book is causing me such sorrow I can't pick it back up. It's so beautiful I'm dying to know what comes next but my heart is caught in the knot of yarn Middlegame is tugging at and trying to knit a sweater of angst from.