A Musing On Things Left Unfinished
So at some point this summer I told my friends that I was going to learn 10 new skills. They of course laughed at me knowing full well I didn't have the drive to actually do it. Determined to prove them wrong I made a list of what I would do. It included such noble endeavors as learn how to ride a horse and learn how to drive standard. After my list was finished I decided I would start with what appeared to be the easiest, which happened to be learn how to fold a paper crane and make 1,000 of them.
In retrospect I'm an idiot. If only I hadn't tacked on the make 1,000 of the little bastards I could have progressed in my list and I would be riding a horse to class right now. Whoops.
At any rate I rushed into my project headstrong determined to make some headway. Learning how to make the paper crane was a cinch. Here even you can too if you watch this handy video.
But the problem was folding a thousand of them. "Why a thousand?" You might ask, which is a perfectly valid question. Well as legend goes anyone who is in possession of a 1,000 cranes (which is called a Semba Zuru) gets one wish. You get this from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. As it goes Sadako was a little girl in Japan dieing from radiation set off by the atomic bomb. She didn't want to die. She hears you can get one wish from a Semba Zuru and begins folding away. She makes them all, wishes not to die, and then unfortunately passes away anyway.
I bought a bunch of sticky notes because they are the perfect size square and only mildly annoying to deal with and began folding. After about a week I was bored and gave up after only folding around 300 cranes.
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So the reason I'm telling you all this is because I went home this weekend and found my bag of unfinished cranes. I decided I want to start back up so I have some sort of accomplishment to brag about. So here I am in life. Folding cranes. Again
I usually just fold these damn things in the background as it doesn't take away much time. It is just tedious. Once the technique is etched in your subconscious it only takes about a minute per crane.
From now on I will include how many cranes I have made in the bottom of my posts
????/1000 (I don't actually have the time to count them right now)
In retrospect I'm an idiot. If only I hadn't tacked on the make 1,000 of the little bastards I could have progressed in my list and I would be riding a horse to class right now. Whoops.
At any rate I rushed into my project headstrong determined to make some headway. Learning how to make the paper crane was a cinch. Here even you can too if you watch this handy video.
But the problem was folding a thousand of them. "Why a thousand?" You might ask, which is a perfectly valid question. Well as legend goes anyone who is in possession of a 1,000 cranes (which is called a Semba Zuru) gets one wish. You get this from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. As it goes Sadako was a little girl in Japan dieing from radiation set off by the atomic bomb. She didn't want to die. She hears you can get one wish from a Semba Zuru and begins folding away. She makes them all, wishes not to die, and then unfortunately passes away anyway.
I bought a bunch of sticky notes because they are the perfect size square and only mildly annoying to deal with and began folding. After about a week I was bored and gave up after only folding around 300 cranes.
------------------------------------------------
So the reason I'm telling you all this is because I went home this weekend and found my bag of unfinished cranes. I decided I want to start back up so I have some sort of accomplishment to brag about. So here I am in life. Folding cranes. Again
I usually just fold these damn things in the background as it doesn't take away much time. It is just tedious. Once the technique is etched in your subconscious it only takes about a minute per crane.
From now on I will include how many cranes I have made in the bottom of my posts
????/1000 (I don't actually have the time to count them right now)
posted by A Underwood at
9:57 PM
4 Comments:
I once made a list of goals of things I was going to do with my close friend. We had such a weird list, including: learn about cars, read ALL the classics and learn how to hold whole conversations where each sentence rhymed.
I am impressed that you are actually working on it. I always find doing things like that a little to daunting for me to try. As I am sure people could guess, I never did actually do any of the stuff on my list.
I feel like in college I am almost learning a lot of new skills and hobbies naturally. For instance I have started to climb, swim, and of course I will be skiing. None of those things add up to making a thousand paper cranes though.
I totally remember in elementary/middle school reading abotu Sadako and the thousand paper cranes. I think it's a cool idea and I love the updated totals at the bottom of the blog posts.
There's a lot of things I want to do too. Right now at home I have a few different things going...a scarf I started LAST thanksgiving....a scrapbook for all my pictures I took in Paris...just a bunch of little things like that.
I'm going to make an effort to get those done of Christmas break. Especially the scarf since it's so cold...
That's really impressive that you got that you made that many. When I was younger I made lists of the things that I was going during the summer, I even made a schedule for myself to follow. Of course I never even finished one day of it. I woke up on the first day, thought about doing what I said I was going to do, then said to myself 'I'll do it tomorrow' and did something else.
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