Starter Or Closer?

I have a confession about myself when it comes to projects. With the baseball season upon us, I thought it a fitting analogy to bring up one minor imperfection about myself [of many] with a comparison to Major League Baseball Pitchers. In baseball, the role of pitcher has assumed astronomically specialized proportions.

There is of course the starter. There is often a middle reliever. There can be a set-up man. There can be the lefty specialist. Finally, we have the ninth inning closer. The closer will sometimes give you two innings, but it's certainly not advisable unless you're Mariano Rivera [bastard!].

Anyway, when it comes to writing I'm essentially a starter and I like to think I'm a really strong starter, but, truth be told, I'm not a strong finisher. If I was a pitcher I would probably need a middle reliever around the seventh inning, but I definitely would need a closer. Closing things out is really hard for me.

This is why I give myself small props for finishing the series Babylon 5 here on the blog. It was five seasons and it was a significant mental undertaking and it proved to me, little old Sci-Fi Fanatic, that I could indeed finish or close things out when I set my mind to it. You see blogging teaches us things about ourselves we questioned. I sit before you, like a knight slaying his dragon that I have defeated my greatest weakness, finishing the deal.

So if I do digress from time to time, it is my natural inclination to stray or lose interest, more out of exhaustion than disinterest. Taking on something fresh, new or different essentially recharges me and gets me rolling again. It seems to anyway.

I can't explain it, but I'm quite simply a starter. How would you classify yourself? Are you a starter, reliever or closer? I'm a bit like Nolan Ryan myself. Well, okay, that may be taking the analogy too far.