I’ve been thinking of this for awhile as deadlines of mine have loomed and past. As brief illness or catatonic stair at the wall have rendered me less than speedy. I don’t need New Year’s resolutions of things that I will learn or do or reach for this year–I have too many things from previous years left undone. Chief among them? Knitting.

Knitting?! You have writing deadlines for a second book of short stories and you’re fucking knitting? (Maybe that was you, dear reader, saying that or maybe it was in my head). I’ve forgotten how knitting calms me. It also causes me to count and be deliberate like breathing. I have a giant basket of five projects in various states of almost finished. What would happen if I actually finished them? It seems silly not to finish them when they look like they’d be fine garments with just a few more hours of time. I could wear them. I could be proud of them. The only thing that is stopping me is me.

That’s probably the real resolution, right? Not to let ourselves get in the way of ourselves.

Knitting is a great companion to the other tricks up my sleeve: writing, singing, mostly. With each of those other ones I am also incomplete, unfinished with beautiful projects awaiting completion.

Nothing is stopping me but me.

So here’s to a year of not starting, but finishing all the things that are half way through.

And maybe 2017 can be about starting again.