Lotteryist Week 51

Endings and Beginnings.

Almost finished with this supposedly 52-week project!

I get so impatient as I get near the end of projects. I always start them with such enthusiasm. But by the end I want them finished, gone, out of my life.

I am impatient to finish the Lotteryist blog. But I will miss it also. Wellington, after the battle of Waterloo, said something like there is nothing more melancholy than a battle lost than a battle won. I have almost won the battle of these 52 blogs and yes, I am melancholy. This project has consumed an immense amount of ‘brain space’ for a very long time. Every day I think about it. It has been an every-present part of my life for all these days and weeks and months. At odd moments a turn of phrase or an idea will pop into my mind and I will think, “I can use that when I write the Lotteryist.” Now I will have immediately to think, “No. I don’t need to fill that thought away. That thought can go away.” After I finish this week’s blog and write next week’s blog the whole thing is done.

It will be like when a friend moves to another town. Granted, the Lotteryist has become an irritating friend. It would be less of an irritating friend if more people had read these blogs. I’m honest enough to admit it would a be less irritating friend if I had won more than $12.00. But for all that and as much as I am pushing against the days for it to be over, I will still miss it.

However, as Natalie Sleeth wrote, “In our end is our beginning.”

Endings always give way to beginnings. It is the way of things. One day ends; another begins. I finish one book; I begin another. I complete one needlework project; I begin another.

When I push the publish button for Lotteryist Week 52 I will have brain space for other projects. There are many things that interest me. The Lotteryist is not yet ended and I am already using brain space for a beginning.

I want to write about visiting each county in my state. There are 77 counties in my state. If writing 52 blogs took all these months, God only knows how long it will take me to do 77!

I want to write about the presidential biographies I am reading. I started with President 1 – Washington nine years ago. I am up to President 37. And again I wonder, how long will it take to write all those blogs.

I want to add to the already crowded field of gardening blogs. To be truthful, I don’t garden; I play in the dirt. Most of my blogs would be about failures, not successes.

I want to do a composer-birthday blog. Or maybe, just to change it up, a composer-death day blog.

I want to do a food-comparison project – like comparing peach jams or vanilla wafers or peanut butters.

So many beginnings pushing against this one ending. I have one more lottery ticket to buy. I have one more Lotteryist to write. I can hardly wait for the ending. And the beginning.