From the Toasted Cheese Calendar writing prompt for today (Finish something you've started):
One Christmas my gift was a doll head. In a box.
My mother is not one to always finish things she starts. (And she bugs me that I haven't finished the amulet bag I started for her a year or so ago.)
She gave me a doll head. As a gift.
It was back when the Cabbage Patch Kids were first popular. Back when the girls who's families had money got the designer actual first edition CPKs. And before they were mass produced.
And so many people bought the patterns and made their own version of the designer doll. And lots of copy-cat versions were out there, too. So there was one off-brand make-your-own doll that you would buy the hard plastic head with the pattern for the body.
And so, with the best of intentions, my mom bought the plastic doll head and pattern. And she named it 'Muffin' and she didn't have a chance to finish it before Christmas. She didn't even have a chance to start it. So wrapped up under the tree, was the head. In a box. Kind of creepy. A head in a box.
And it didn't get finished. And it didn't get started. And I guess, eventually, mom decided I was probably too old to worry about Muffin anymore. And she's still sitting somewhere in the back of some closet. (Muffin, of course, not mom)
I'm not bitter about not getting the gift. I was old enough when unwrapping the head in the box to realize that might well be all it would ever be, so I'm not mad that it never actually became the doll it might have been.
It's just my best illustration of why I have a hard time finishing things.
And why I will work on writing prompts every day I can make it happen. A little story finished is still a story.