No more broken windows!

Another day, I decided to listen to all Outro dia, resolvi ouvir todos os podcasts de Sew ~ Stitch ~ Create podcasts that were missing. In one of them, Brye Lynn tells us about a very interesting idea: WIPs are like broken windows.

She used the idea by former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, about broken windows: he said that, if you have an abandoned building and don't fix its broken windows as soon as they come out, in a little while there will be more vandalism - and the building will be used as a meeting point by drug addicts, then drug dealers, and so on. In other words, a problem that started small soon becomes something hard to control.

(I find this notion absolutely perfect, especially when I think of all the tiny things we leave without fixing at home, and later we realize everything needs repair.)

So Brye Lynn, thinking along this line, came to the conclusion that our WIPs follow the same rule: you start a project, then you fall in love with a new technique and start using it in some other project, then you go to the store and buy some fabric to make something else, then you get tired of what you're working on and start something new...

I found the idea BRILLIANT! And, worse, I realized I have the horrible habit of creating "broken windows" in absolutely everything in my life! You just have to notice that I was writing daily and then I vanished for a few weeks. I've been reading a book (great one, by the way) for 2 years, and it's not even mine, I borrowed it! At the same time, I have at least two other books started, and my list of WIPs, as you already know, is quite big.

And with this, it came the action plan "No more broken windows!". Every time I have to read a book, I go back to the one that needs to be returned to the rightful owner. After this one, I need to go back to one of the books I have already started! And regarding the WIPs...

Actually, I have a good reason not to have written here in the last weeks: I was finishing a project for a book! Yes, that's right! Some crazy girls invited me to take part in a book with them, and for that I'd have to create a knitting pattern - which proves they really are crazy, since I'm very new at knitting! But as I was saying, they invited me and I said yes - so when the due date for the text was close, I had to use all my free time for that commitment! Now I finished it, I can go back to my projects... and since the idea is to go back to my WIPs before they become UFOs, I'm only working on my Drift Scarf.

I believe that, just like for everything in life, this plan will work as long as I'm disciplined enough to put it into action. Sometimes it's hard, I admit it - I feel like going after something new. But since I myself made the rule, it's got exceptions: I currently need some things I intend to make myself, sewing. In these cases, since they're usually things I start and finish in the same day, I won't be breaking new windows!

Wish me luck! ;-)