Half-Finished

I have a fascination with half-finished things.

Once, on a tour of the Crayola factory, I got a crayon wrapper before the color name was printed on it. I thought it was cool to have this souvenir that only someone who had been to the factory could possibly have. They didn't send papers like this out into the world, half-finished like that. I'm not sure where the crayon wrapper is now, but for a while, it joined a collection I had of similar unfinished items, mainly from factory tours (our family vacations generally consist of at least one factory tour).

Even now, I find such things interesting. I like seeing the blank bulletin paper each week before I print it, and when it's only printed on one side. It's almost like a secret. I am one of few people who see the bulletin this way--pre-printing.

Because I am a writer, and I worked a Christian summer camp, and I'm interested in how and why humans think the way they do, and mostly because I was in a poetry class once in college, I sometimes try to think of deeper meanings to my eccentricities.

I was pondering this yesterday while printing the bulletin. Bulletin printing allows lots of pondering time.
I suppose you could say that seeing things half-finished gives me hope: Look at what it was originally--bare, incomplete, lacking--and now what it is--complete, finished, beautiful. (Christian-camp-me inserts, "Like us, before and after Jesus" here.)
You could also say that I like being an insider. I like knowing this secret because it makes me feel elite and included.
You could also say that this is why so many of my little projects and plans are only half-finished. That's the joke my mom would make. My sister would laugh. I would laugh too, and then vow to change. And I would--half-way. I'm a dreamer that needs to work on being more of a doer.

But I'm not going to stand behind any of those theories, whatever truth may be in them. I simply like half-finished things. I don't know why. They're just neat.