I just sent out an email announcing the termination of a project that I’d started a while back. It didn’t affect many people, but I feel angry that I was so silly as to have taken on the project in the first place. What do I feel at the death of a project? Relief, because it was on my mind constantly and now I’ll have some peace from it. Distance, because I feel like I did something wrong to the people involved, and that I cannot fully make it up to them by reimbursing them.

I cannot erase it, but hopefully I can make it as less than a footnote on an otherwise productive career.