That moment most bloggers arrive at eventually.

• When I was in high school I was very self-conscious about the braces on my teeth. On the day they finally came off, I waltzed around school smiling broadly at everybody ... then realized nobody noticed. It was on that day I realized it's a waste of energy to be self-conscious because most people are so caught up with their own stuff they don't notice yours. It was liberating.
  
  
• My mother used to mock me: "You never finish anything you start." It's true there were many partially completed projects strewn around my room - e.g., TWO sweaters which I knitted all the way to the last sleeve and then abandoned. (To be fair, though, it was not just out of boredom I quit those knitting projects. It had become more and more obvious the sweaters were going to be irredeemably ugly.)
  
  
• My mother's accusation stung. As an adult, therefore, I've insisted on seeing every project through -- to the point of being whacky. For instance, when I was building my house I had the feeling every night that I couldn't rest till the job was done. Some things cannot be completed in one sitting, one has to rest or perish...
  
  
• I realized recently that Pratie Place, also, was falling under my long-dead mother's rubric. Not only had I set myself a task which, in order to "see it through," would require writing till I die, but I'd also somehow decided I had to do it every day!
  
  
• Remembering the braces lesson, I realized that nobody but me noticed or cared that I'd posted something every single day since I began in January of last year. It was a pointless discipline.
  
  
• So, yesterday, I never opened the shutters here. Nothing bad happened.
  
  
• In fact, it felt good and will probably happen again. Maybe often.

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