On starting and finishing ideas, writing and study －アイデア、作文、勉強を始める事と終える事について－

“A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.”

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it.  If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End of the World Switch.  PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH!’, the paint wouldn’t  even have time to dry.”

“Pets are always a help in times of stress.  And in times of starvation, too, of course.”

All from Terry Pratchett

An author, whose books I often used to read when I was a teenager, died a couple of years ago.  Terry Pratchett wrote an amazingly long series of books set in a fantasy world called the Discworld.  He was a very funny writer, as you can see from a few of his quotes above.

I must have read about 25 of his novels.  But at the time of his death, he had completed 70 novels.  And he had 10 more unfinished novels in his computer hard drive.

I didn’t stop reading his books because I had ceased to find them funny.  I just couldn’t keep up.  He was writing faster than I could continue reading, and so I gave up.

I really admire Terry’s sense of humour.  But I also really admire his ability to get things finished.  He had an incredible work-ethic.  He even replied to every fan letter he received, which must have been lots.  Actually, it was probably a big mistake to tell people that he always replied to every fan letter.  All sorts of crazy people must have written, knowing that they would get a response.

I envy Terry’s ability to finish things because I am the kind of person who only likes to start things.  I get extremely enthusiastic for any new project I start.  Then I quickly slip to being only mildly interested, then rather bored or frustrated.  To get rid of my boredom or frustration, I just start something new, and am completely enthusiastic again, for a while.

I used to be ashamed to let anyone see my Japanese language study books.  The reason was that I had a huge pile of them, and I hadn’t read any of them to the end.  I started out with a phrase-book.  Then, after learning a few phrases, I got bored.  So I bought a grammar textbook.  I was convinced that this was the brilliant new way forward, until I became frustrated with reading it.  So I switched to a book of kanji.  I loved that kanji book, until...  You get the idea.

It must be nice to be a person who can see an idea through to the end.  If I were that kind of person then three-quarters of the way through my blog entries, I wouldn’t start thinking, “How nice would a cup of tea be right now?”  One of these days I’m going to learn to fini

Vocabulary:

to swear something – to make a solemn promise that something is true

to snore – to make a loud noise when sleeping because of partly blocked breathing

starvation – a lack of food leading to death

to cease – to stop

to keep up – to match the progress of; to follow without falling behind

a work-ethic – an attitude of hard work