Picking up the threads of an interrupted long project can be…

Interesting: It’s been a long time since you played with the project, and so coming back to it feels like saying hello to an old friend. There is familiarity there, a desire to rekindle the pleasantness that you once shared. It’s a comforting space to be. You know the conventions, the ropes, the twists and turns, because mostly, you put them there. Or else, you watched helplessly as they formed around you, which makes picking up the old threads a bit…

Frustrating: You say hello to your old project, and feel that satisfying rush of joy at the start. Oh, it’s so nice to be in a familiar space after spending weeks or months occupied with other, sometimes tedious, sometimes unpleasant, stuff. But then, once you’ve had your ten minutes of rekindled pleasure, you start remembering all the things about the project that were driving you nuts when you gladly turned your back on it. You might have had a reason for putting it aside so you could finish another project, or had to tend to something urgent that came up and just landed in your lap. Or you were helping someone out. Either way, you had to go, and dropping the project was necessary. You probably pretended at the time that you were doing so reluctantly. Such a pain to be letting the project for a while, I was really starting to move along with it, or, Really enjoying being in the zone, getting so much writing done, or, If I keep going at this pace, I’ll be done in six months! Yeah, right! None of those things were true. Or they were only partially so. Truth is, you were in a muddle; one that wasn’t going to be pleasant to smooth out. And now, after having some guilt-free time away from the project, It wasn’t my choice! I had to get this other work done, you’re back facing the smirking enemy again, knowing this time you have run out of excuses. All those old dilemmas and messes are still there where you left them, except it’s worse, because in the time you were away, you kind of forgot how they got there, and so now you have less of a clue about how you’ll fix it. You’ll have to retrace your steps first, get back into the frame of mind that first led you into the hole, and then try to figure out how you will emerge into the light.

Empowering: It’s a mess, sure. You’ve returned to the project, and not only is it a mess, but it’s now rusty. Or you’re rusty, because you stopped thinking about it. But then, something amazing happens. You reacquaint yourself with the old problems and find that you’re seeing them from the opposite side of the room. They look different from here. It’s like some capricious elf came along in your absence and turned everything upside down, allowing you to now examine it all from a completely different vantage point.