please empty your brain below

You do seem to have quite a lot of projects on the go at once. Quite a few Unlost Rivers and Random Grid Squares to go as well - both always make for interesting reads.
Will you be walking the Loop in the opposite direction this time?
Some completest type projects never finish, always more words to record, plants to classify, diseases to cure and on it goes.

I think agreement has finally been reached to start mapping the sea bed, no doubt once they finish, they'll record it all over again with better equipment, or find areas to examine in more detail.
My project - inspired by dg''s Random Boroughs - is to visit all 86 of the towns after which Grand Union large motor boats were named. I've managed one so far (Saltaire, where I toured the village, explored the park, walked along the canal, went on the tramway, and wrote a great deal about the Wurlitzer) not counting the twenty or so I've already incidentally been to. Next up is Ladybank so it keeps getting deferred...
Reading this gave me flashbacks to Belbin team types and being found to be a "completer finisher". Not sure I'd still be rated as that nowadays though. Still, roles change and adapt over time.

I can see why you're a completist with your smaller, more constrained tasks. Those have a defined end point and you do a great job in finishing them. Don't know why but something inside me disagrees with your blog and diary production "tasks" as being completist. They'll never complete unless you decide to stop, ill health forces you to stop or the inevitable happens. I just view those as things you either enjoy doing or you now feel "obliged" to do.
I crossed the international date line and missed a day.
Completist behaviour can be dangerous. I didn't miss my team's football matches home and away for three years once. Then I didn't go and realised the world was not going to end. I felt better for it also.

Don't spend your blog pleasing others by penning something weak - go for quality not quantity.
Dg, serious question and be honest has there ever been a 'completist thing that you've started and regretted because you have never finished it?

dg writes: Started but never finished, yes.
Regretted, no.

I admire your completist-ness. In the past I've wanted to be like this but never managed. Guess I'm just either not enough of a completist or just a downright failure.
I'm starting to be annoyed at my own life, where I've always managed to be between jobs in the winter. Although if I was free in the summer, I might end up too busy to find something else.
You really should be on MasterMind one time (or have you already been?!). Chosen subject...?
Thanks for continuing to deliver something worth reading every day.

If longish distance paths within easy reach of London are your thing, may I suggest the High Weald Landscape Trail through Sussex and Kent?
I went down the North Downs line Saturday. Didn't disappoint. Plenty of flowers out down the hills.
I enjoy reading about your projects, and have been inspired to tackle many of them myself.
Unfortunately for me life with a family usually gets in the way, or I get sidetracked by something else in the meantime, so things don't often get finished in a timely manner.

Case in point - I've only done half the Chess Valley walk that you did in June 2013, and only one third of the Fleet River!

But the fact that I still remember I've not completed them means I will one day!
I'm really looking forward to the NDW write up, thanks!
Perhaps try something underground in every London borough? (Tube stations not counting, of course!)
If you don't already know about this, can I recommend you have a look at the Mass Observation Archive daily diary day, which is tomorrow 12th May?
http://www.massobs.org.uk/write-for-us/12th-may
DG. I hope to be following you at a respectful distance as you walk the NDW. I've walked most of it from Farnham to the Medway but never on towards Dover.
BTW, what is the status of your project which revisits the walks in the London Transport Country Walks 1971 book?
Nails UK has already mentioned diary day, but I thought DG might be interested in Diary Fest at King's College London on the 30th May.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/Cultural/-/Projects/DearDiary.aspx

Knowing DG, it's probably already in his diary! And given the unbroken streak of 40 years, I really think he should be on the agenda.
If you're going to do the Capital Ring again, why not do a variation on a theme and do the Green London Way instead? Both are good.
How about visiting all the Wharves of the Thames? Maybe just those that are within a London borough, or we'd lose you to the Kent and Essex coasts for too long.
I’ve a little bit of a slow-motion completionist tendency with running routes - over the past 8 years I’ve done ~3/4 of the Thames Path, ~3/4 of the London Loop, ~1/2 of the North Downs Way, ~1/2 of the Ridgeway and ~1/3 of the South Downs way, although written down like that, maybe completionist is the wrong word...

(I have finished a few of my running projects - Capital Ring, River Lea/Lee and Brighton-London).

For me, it’s a way of getting me away from my usual routes to somewhere new. I also like plotting the GPS traces and seeing the map slowly filling up with a network of paths.










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