What project or projects would you like to pursue this coming year?
Question for you, dear reader.
Question for myself.
Does the idea of tackling a project set your heart beating with excitement? It sure does for me. The project could be as small as a bulletin board, or as big as training to run a marathon—large or small, projects are my orientation, my road maps for life.
When I settle on a project, I like to see it through to completion. More accurately I need to see it through to completion. I am compelled to do the project justice.
I’ve got lots of small projects on the go, including bulletin board artwork (my “story-time friends” are already appearing: that’s a book-sniffing bear from “Read It, Don’t Eat It!”). But the over-arching larger project is currently eluding me. The ingredients for a big project are as follows: it’s got a clear and simple-to-hold goal; it’s completed over a long period of time (a year is a tidy amount); and while the goal may be clear, the outcome is entirely uncertain; the challenges along the way can’t be predicted, nor can my response to those challenges; and finally, I don’t know in advance where the project may lead—toward what conclusions, or revelations, or experiences, or connections.
What a recipe! What fantastic potential for discovery and learning!
Projects are exciting.
A project opens a doorway to the unknown. Committing to a project fills me with hope.
From past experience, I know that an idea for a project will likely strike almost at random, seemingly out of the blue, and also that I’ll know almost immediately if it will stick. Aha! Yes! But even when I feel the pull of a possible project, I’m a cautious about committing (because when I do commit, as mentioned, I’m all in). So I test the waters. Experiment, play, mull, talk to people who are experts, float the notion past trusted ears, gather a support network of believers.
An example.
Many years ago, I got the idea to do a triathlon. What cracks me up is that my initial idea was not “do a triathlon” but “become an Olympic-level triathlete.” Sure, Carrie, why not? I was at the time of this fantastical thought, 35 years old, the mother of four young children, and not only did I not know how to swim, I panicked when putting my face under water. Despite returning to reality (within a few hours of having the enormously aspirational thought), the core of the idea stuck. Still pretty aspirational, let’s admit.
Ten months later, I completed an Olympic-length triathlon, including a 1500-metre open water swim in a lake.
In the in-between months, I’d committed fully and finessed a plan that made the goal achievable. For starters, I’d learned how to swim, and trained in the pool diligently. I’d competed in several practice races (including a half-marathon). Along the way, there were a number of unexpected outcomes: I’d changed my perception of myself, gaining a sense of greater strength, endurance and autonomy; I’d changed my routine, carved out time (early in the morning) to train, and discovered that I loved exercise in all forms, solo and with friends (still doing it!); I’d changed my relationship with my body, appreciating its strength, respecting its limitations.
And I’d had the idea for a new book (which became Girl Runner). Never saw that coming.
Girl Runner became, of course, its own big project.
And Girl Runner opened doors that led to unexpected places too. For example, after publishing Girl Runner, I was commissioned to write a magazine piece about groundbreaking women runners in Canada; months late, the magazine’s editor killed the piece; but the interviews I’d done with these amazing women led me to commit to an unexpected new big project: coaching a girls’ rep soccer team. The women I’d interviewed had talked about the importance of role models in bringing about change for women and girls in sports—that women needed to be, and to be seen, not just as athletes, but also as coaches, referees, sports administrators, decision-makers and experts.
A seed had been planted—not the seed I would have chosen or anticipated—and when the opportunity to coach arose, a few months later, I said yes. I spent years on that big project.
I think the coaching project led me, in a roundabout way, to co-founding The X Page storytelling workshop—another big and life-changing decision.
At present, I’m fresh out of projects.
Or maybe the more accurate phrasing would be: I’m nosing around for a new big project. I’m open to ideas.
The library-job/job-job project (begun in the aftermath of publishing Francie’s Got A Gun) took a few meandering routes, and I consider it a success: now it’s woven into the fabric of my every day life. It stuck.
I think I’ve got room for another project right now. I’m pursuing a certificate in conflict management and mediation, started last winter, but it’s not clear that it is yet a project in the way that I’ve come to view them. In part that’s because I’m pursuing it quite sporadically; however, it does have an uncertain outcome. So it has potential.
Beyond that, I turn 50 in a few months, and during a conversation with a friend recently, she floated the idea of celebrating 50 with a series of events … or experiences … or activities. Could celebrating be a project? Fifty weeks of [fill in the blank] to celebrate half a century of discovering and learning how to live here on planet Earth, in this particular human form?
TBD.
xo, Carrie