Completion is good—real completion, not the concept, which I parrot often enough with a trail of real incompletions behind me. I just mis-spoke: There are no “real” incompletions; incompletions exist only in language. Using incompletion as a distinction, however, does serve to focus attention on where the drag occurs that hampers forward motion in real life.
I cleaned off my desk to start the process, and it was a good thing, since it’s tax time. The past two years I’ve had to file an amended return because, after filing, I discovered papers that got lost in the drifts on my desk. Instead of procrastinating, I stayed up until 4:30 last night to finish and e-file both state and federal returns three days before the deadline.
For four (more like 15) years or so, I’ve been saying that I really need to make a will. Nancy D walked me through everything from why I would want to do that to “what’s the next step?” The next day I found a good lawyer to call for an appointment.
When was the last time I took a real vacation? I forget. I do know I went to France in 2013, and I’m pretty sure I went to a lot of stage productions in London in 2016. So when my friend Maggie invited me to her house at Rehoboth Beach for a week, I said yes. The fact that we’ll be getting her place ready for summer rentals is not a bug but a “feature.” I love doing that stuff.
Here’s the thing: I’m not sure there’s universal agreement on what constitutes a “real vacation.” I’ve rarely had a terrific time on a vacation some folks consider “real.” As a person with red hair, I’ve never liked sitting on the beach under a hammering sun. (And there’s sand on the beach!) Then someone mentioned the fun of playing in the ocean at dawn in Panama–which would handle both sand and sun–and I immediately signed up to go. That’s a kind of completion: giving The Beach a chance.
It’s dawning on me, speaking of dawn, that incompletions are like integrity—a mountain with no top. And, like preparing a rental house, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.