"Working on a project" means completing a particular number of specific creative acts. Some examples: take one hundred photos of silver things, write a dozen poems about fruit, cook seven recipes whose titles have seven syllables, drive one hundred miles while composing forty-four songs.
Projects keep me focused. They get me out of ruts, shake up my way of doing and seeing things, and are usually quite fun. Since I assign myself my projects, I can also alter or abandon them at will.
I haven't worked on a project for a long while. Here is my list of criteria:
- Project involves zero possibility of encountering people walking around in a public area eating fudge
- Project involves zero possibility of encountering people who are telling their children what not to do
Yes, it's that time of year. Everyone is wearing shorts. I am testy.
Hence, the Necessary Summer Project.
I spend my entire year pining for warm and sunny days. Where I live, there are cold and sunny days immediately followed by hot and sunny days. Days I stay inside with the blinds closed.
Yesterday, I ventured to the Big Sunny World and unwittingly found myself in a touristy little town. If you live in the U.S., you know the town. The merchants hawk one of four things: overpriced crap emblazoned with cartoon characters, fried foods that were never meant to be fried, oversized t-shirts with majestic portraits of wolves. The fourth thing? You see it in the hands of the "fudge walkers."
They wait in long lines for fudge. They walk around eating fudge.
I never like fudge, but I detest it on a hot day.
Wilting in the heat, a blister ballooning on my right heel, all I wanted was a catnap in a shady castle ruin.
Twenty-four hours later, at home with my air conditioner and dogs, a full recovery seems likely.
I hope a project will rouse me from these inevitable summer doldrums.
