Family of Origin Interlude #3

Evidence would suggest that the males in my family suffer from a genetic disorder: the gene that causes someone to start a project is (overly) dominant, while the gene that causes them to complete a project once it's been started is basically non-existent. 

A couple of examples should easily illustrate the point.

Years ago my Mum asked Sib2 and I to install a fence around the perimeter of her property. So we bought all the posts, panels and concrete, rented a gas-powered post hole digger, and spent a weekend building Mum a fence -- mostly. We sunk and cemented all the posts, and nailed in all the panels. but we didn't go back to trim the posts to a consistent length above the panels. For years Sib2 listened to Mum complain that the posts were all sticking at random lengths above top of the fence, until he eventually went back to cut them all to length.

Then there was the kitchen in my first house. I had contractors come in and move some walls, rebuild the roof, run new power and so forth. They left me with an empty, drywalled box, and then I went in and installed the cabinets and appliances, laid tile, painted and installed trim -- well, most of the trim. I got the crown molding and window trim installed, but for some reason opted to punt on baseboards. For years the kitchen looked fabulous, as long as you didn't look at the bottom edge of the walls. I think it was about three years before I decided that I should probably install the baseboards in case I ever needed to sell the house.* 

Similar tales of 95% completed projects litter the ground of our family's history.

But while this problem can be managed when you've got untold years to wait for the impulse to complete the last 5% of a project to appear, when there's suddenly a far less generous clock on completion it becomes something of a problem.

For example, when I moved into my condo a year ago I painted the walls. Much of the trim, however, is still waiting for a refresh. What's worse, I've painted some of the trim so the unpainted sections are all the more obvious. And while I frankly don't really see it anymore, the last thing I want to do to whomever winds up managing my estate is leave them with a condo full of partially completed projects -- painting is far from the only half-completed thing I've started -- that all need to be completed before the condo can be lived in or sold. 

Clearly, I'm going to need to develop some new strategies for project completion. I think I'll start with my squares. 


* To be perfectly honest, I didn't install the very last piece of kitchen trim until the night before the house went on the market.