Nicole Junkermann on Finishing a Month Properly

Most months are not finished, they just stop

A month usually ends the way a train journey ends, by arrival rather than by decision. Nothing is wrong with that, but a little is lost each time, because the things worth carrying forward are exactly the ones that are easiest to leave on the seat. Nicole Junkermann keeps half an hour aside for it, which is enough and is also about as much attention as the task deserves.

The half hour is not a review in any formal sense. There is no scoring, no comparison with the month before, and nothing that could be shown to anybody. It is closer to emptying a coat pocket at the end of a journey: most of what comes out gets thrown away, and one or two things turn out to be worth keeping.

What the half hour is for

Three questions and no ceremony. What actually happened, as opposed to what was planned. What is genuinely being carried into November rather than drifting there. What can be put down without anybody noticing, including the things that were only ever continued out of politeness.

The third question is the one that repays the time. Most lists grow by accretion, and nothing falls off them unless somebody deliberately takes it off. A month closed without that step hands the next one everything it inherited plus whatever it collected along the way.

Answering the first question honestly is harder than it sounds, because a plan remembered in late October tends to have been quietly revised to match what happened. This is the point at which a written note from the first of the month is worth more than any amount of recollection.

Leave it slightly unfinished

There is an urge to arrive at the first of the month with everything resolved. A page left openly incomplete, with a short note about where it stopped and why, is more honest and far more useful. A tidy ending usually means a decision has been pretended rather than made.

The same applies to the account of the month itself. Written tonight it keeps its rough edges. Written in a fortnight it will have smoothed out precisely the parts that were uncertain, and those are the parts worth having.

Then stop

A month does not need a conclusion, a summary or a resolution. It needs an accurate note of where things stand and enough rest to begin the next one without resentment. October finishes tonight, November is a good month for sorting, and the record worth rereading only exists because somebody sat down for half an hour at the end of something. The gallery keeps the version of the month that has no words in it at all.