Abducted by UFOs (UnFinished Objects) 🛸

A close encounter with creative clutter, guilt, and the art of letting go

There’s a half-hooked rug in my basement, an unfinished crochet scarf in a drawer, and about 10,000 words of a novel gathering dust in my computer. These are the UFOs I’m referring to. “UnFinished Objects” are what some crafters call projects they’ve started but never completed. I’d like to add something else to that pile: ideas. You know, the kind you scribble into a journal with every intention of blowing life into someday.

Until recently, I wasn’t too concerned about them. I’d made peace, more or less, with the guilt over wasted money on materials and tools. (Yes, there are always new tools you need to buy. It’s practically a rule.)

Every so often, when I spot one of these UFOs stuffed in a drawer, I think, “I really should finish that.” I don’t. Usually, because I’ve lost interest, maybe it was boring. Or, like with drawing, I didn’t love it enough to invest the time it would take to produce something someone might actually recognize.

Then there are the ideas in my journal. Those are harder to ignore. I feel a pang when I try to let them go. It feels like squashing a butterfly. A fleeting moment of inspiration, gone.

But recently, two incidents made me rethink my strategy for dealing with UFOs.

The first took place during the Blacksmiths, Soldiers, and Log Cabin Weekend at the Waterloo Farm Museum. I was demonstrating rug hooking, and a family had gathered around my hooking frame. One of them, a middle-aged woman, looked wistfully at my work and said, “After Grandma died, I found a rug she started but never finished. I don’t know what to do with it.”

She looked genuinely sad. I told her she could learn to hook and finish it, because that seemed like the encouraging thing to say. But in truth, I was thinking about the half-finished crochet scarf I keep shoving aside. What will my family feel about my unfinished projects? Not sadness, that I can assure you. More likely annoyance that I didn’t donate the unused yarn and crochet hooks to the Kiwanis Thrift Store myself.

Not long after that, another incident gave me pause. (Side note: I can’t help thinking of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon every time I use the word incident. I know—it’s a curious thing how my mind works.)

I was reading the post Before You Lose the Urge on Carolyn Yoo’s Substack, where she wrote:

“Realistically, most of us have a heaping pile of creative ideas that have been hastily tended to and left ignored. What then happens to a neglected creative urge?”

“Yes,” I thought. “I would like to know.” I pictured all my squashed ideas lying lifeless in my journal.

She went on:

“Every unfinished idea creates mental tension, while acting on them releases that pressure, freeing us to make space for new things.”

Great. I sat with that for a while, thinking about the novel I started and abandoned, the zines I meant to make, the Italy trip recap from my 50th birthday nine years ago that still isn’t finished.

I can’t possibly complete every unfinished thing. Maybe the real challenge is learning how to say goodbye, to let go with intention, and make room for what’s next. To accept that maybe I already got what I needed. I’d worked through whatever was driving me to write those 10,000 words in the abandoned novel. I’d realized crochet just isn’t for me.

So no, I won’t be crocheting everyone a scarf for Christmas. And I probably won’t write that novel. But I can stop pretending I might. And that feels oddly liberating. I’m giving myself permission to move on.

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No wonder I haven’t had time to work on my UFOs! We’ve been very busy writing. Click on the picture to read the full article.

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Digging In the Archives

I’d write this very differently if I were to rewrite it. Perhaps I will add to my list of projects.

Let me know what you thought of Ruth’s story.