Day 28: A Little Help From My Friends

These guys don't look like the Beatles...

"Oh come on, you're so close! Don't give up now..." This was Danny at around 3 pm on Friday, after I told him about the admittedly lame encounter I was going to count for my Encantada of the day.

I'd helped the woman sitting next to me at the coffee shop figure out how to make an astronaut costume for her 3 year old son (the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse was my main contribution). We'd had a pleasant interaction, on a non-trivial topic, but I'd hadn't asked her name, nor had I told her about the project. I could have. I had no good reason not to, other than that I was "doing homework" and didn't want to interrupt the flow any more than I already was doing. Bad excuse. Danny had pegged me pretty good: I was just kind of giving up.

Why is it that the follow-through can be so hard? I've had this problem before. It's painful to admit it might be a trend, this getting excited about starting something but struggling to keep it going once the payoff stops being obvious. My mother could no doubt pull out oodles of examples, like when I wanted to quit the flute or my experience with diving lessons. The not-doing-my-homework of this morning feels like an example, even -- I'm at a spot right now where what I'm trying to write isn't coming together in an obvious way, which makes me not even want to bother dealing with it. I'm at finding reasons why what I've already done is good enough, even if doing more is good quite likely to make it better.

In the Encantada case, it's not that I don't want to finish the project. I intend to. I'm here writing, aren't I? It's just that I feel like I've already gotten out of it what I hoped to get out of it, and I'm having trouble finishing it off with gusto. "Finish hard to the wall" is a tried-and-true bit of swim coach advice. Clearly I am not doing that.

Luckily, my next door neighbors swooped in last night for an eleventh-hour save. Just as me, Danny, my cousin, and her husband were sitting down to play a board game (fun, but nothing new here), Robert, the video game reviewer who lives in the next condo over, knocked on the door. "We're playing Beatles Rock Band over here, I don't know if you're in for the night, but you should come join." So we did.

Robert had three friends already there, positioned around the fake instruments. There were Mike, Diane, and a guy who's name I didn't catch but who learned to play some mean drums all by playing the video game. It wasn't the most conversational of settings, but it was definitely fun. Three part harmonies and back-up vocals meant that 6 people could be playing all at once. And everyone could sing along, even if they weren't part of the game. Once Robert's wife Sarah came home from her softball game, we had enough women for an all-girl rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (I played drums).

And, inspired and prodded by Danny's afternoon call-out, I left and went home to get the camera to document the evening. I told everyone about the project, and why I was taking photos. I even finally told Robert that I've been following him on Twitter for months, which, even though he has thousands of followers, occasionally leads to some creepy moments of knowing more than is normal about what your neighbors are doing. After a final rendition of "A Little Help From My Friends," we headed home, basking in the glow of great music, good people, and games that move by themselves.