Project Pivot: Breaking the rules to follow an idea

Where I come from, you finish what you start. Join a team; make every practice. Get an assignment; complete it on time. Start a book; finish the book. Say you’re going to do whatever; do whatever until whatever is done. Those were the rule’s in my mother’s house, so those are the rules, at age 32, I still march to in my own house. Good training, Nancy.

I’ve recently stumbled upon a quandary with regard to these instincts. The project I started a few months ago, a new book, was being threatened by a series of things: a) I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task of jumping, feet first into a long work of fiction, b) I was kind of procrastinating, c) I was hit with another idea that I got really excited about.

But following new ideas into the weeds with an open project pending isn’t part of my programming. So I resisted. Maybe later. I said I’m doing this thing. So I’m doing it.

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4000 Years for Choice v. Hobby Lobby

I just lost — nay, invested — an hour of my Friday morning pawing through the 50 beautiful and informative designs of artist Heather Ault’s 4000 Years for Choice project. I am enamored. These lovely pieces each describe a fascinating and important benchmark in the history of women’s birth control choices.

connect_1024x1024Did you know Egyptians had a recipe for a contraceptive in 3000 BCE? I mean, it was made of fermented dough and crocodile poo, but still! Or that Plato and Aristotle were totally into family planning? I sort of have a crush on them right now.

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Awesome things I don’t do

Sometimes I have a bit of an enthusiasm problem. I hear about a thing, I get excited about it, and I just sort of decide I’m a person who participates in it. I absorb it into my identity without actually executing the thing. There are just too many super cool things in the world and not enough time or energy for implementation. Maybe by listing some of them publicly I will pressure myself to do some of them. Or, at the very least, relieve myself of the guilt of pretending I do them, because look, I said it here once that I don’t.

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