When my family moved to your new location, we got a rental house in one of the city’s historical districts. Built sometime around 1904, it’s a classic home with a lot of, let’s call it character.
The problem with character though, is that it takes a lot of work to maintain properly. And while this is a rental, it’s pretty clear that not only has it not always been maintained well, but sometimes people came in with some big ideas, and didn’t really follow through.
For example, the Second floor used to have carpet. How do I know? Because the baseboards are a half-inch or more off the floor, set up for carpet that someone ripped out at some point to expose the nice hardwood floorboards underneath.
Of course those floorboards are also pretty scuffed and scratched from decades of use, to say nothing of the carpet laying on top of it for who knows how long. They really need a major resurfacing (if they can be salvaged at all), and the baseboards need to be redone and lowered to eliminate the gaps in the flooring. Then you’d need to repaint.
But for the person who ripped out the carpet, that’s where they stopped. Why did they leave the job half-done? Who knows. Maybe they ran out of money, or time, or interest. Maybe all three. I may never know.
What I do know, is that living in a constant reminder of what half-done looks like has been motivational for me. It’s a problem I’ve been guilty of far too often myself. Major hobby projects get half finished, and left, to eventually be either redone, or tossed, depending on the project in question. I should put the coffee down, I’m not a closer.
But I’m getting better. When I think about starting a new game, adding another project to my overloaded TODO list before I remove two, I walk up the stairs, and take a long, hard look and the floor, and the gap between the baseboards. And I remind myself of what not finishing what I’ve started looks like.