Now that my mom is settled in a wonderful personal care facility, recovered well from her fall in early December, my project mania is slowly resurrecting itself, as if it is alive, as if it has a personality and a character and a will of its own.

Which, on reflection, it does.

My website, in which this essay is posted, is all about projects, thus the web address poetprojects.com. I wrote about my own project mania back in September of 2023, at that point modifying my meds to help control that mania itself, which could be consuming. 

The med change was successful, though I can’t say I love the change. The rush and wonder, the all-consuming nature of working on projects was thrilling, if not overwhelming. A huge downside was being so consumed that I forgot to check my calendar and missed appointments.

I don’t quite have the singularity of focus on projects that I remember growing up and well into my thirties, some twenty-five to forty years ago. Back then I would work well past bedtime to write and build and create. Now, I hit nine o’clock or so and I’m usually in bed or on my way. 

It might not be my age, though. It might just be routine. We all fall into routine, the tendency to do certain tasks and activities at certain times day to day, week to week, and so on. That pattern overlays the choices I make throughout my days.

Major life changes rupture this, though, for good or bad. My mom falling and the subsequent attention I gladly gave to helping her get better altered that pattern. Our four children no longer living here drastically changed the pattern. Having three dogs instead of two sent me down a major fork. 

And getting older, rather feeling older, being retired from teaching, getting through the COVID years, the relationship with my phone and social media fluctuating, all of this, too, brought change. 

Focusing on my mental and physical health, making sure that I eat well, that I develop and nurture hobbies, that I maintain and grow my personal relationships, these things are at the core of allowing me to pursue projects of interest and reward.

So, as part of a quarterly commitment with my blog, I want to outline the current projects I find myself working on. These are not in any order of importance to me. They just are projects.

Renovating the side yard–

Wendy I are turning the side yard of our house into a retreat of sorts, turning the small shed there into a writer’s nook, adding a small pond and about one hundred square feet of interior space to the shed along with a small deck and a narrow dock that extends into the pond, allowing the space to feel like a lake house. We are going to add a patio that extends the driveway into the yard made of black locust end grain pavers. 

Digital design and woodworking

The Writer’s Nook project extends from work that I do for my friend Dave. Dave owns a woodworking business that specializes in live edge slabs, reclaimed barn wood, and end grain furniture, flooring and road/patio pavers. The pavers have been installed as an alley in Chicago and will soon be used as a road in Cleveland and possibly a road in Philadelphia. I do digital work for Dave and he repays me with lumber, access to his shop, and expertise. I’m picking up mushroom boards he is providing me later this week that I’ll use as siding for the nook. He is also providing the pavers I’ll use for the patio. I’ve done brochures, banners, business cards, truck magnets, flyers and website design for him as well as helping him with laser engraving and maintaining his six foot by eighteen foot CNC/facing machine. 

Volunteering for our local Future City Team

Future City is a world-wide competition for middle school students that has them design and build a model city set one hundred years in the future based on a theme that the Future City organization sets for each year. My three sons all participated in the program while they were in middle school and twice I served as the official role of mentor during those years. This past year I took on the role of mentor again when my friend Mike called me having found out I was retired. I took all of one minute to say yes. We just got back from the world championships in Washington DC two weeks ago where the team placed third, an outstanding result considering there were fifty-eight teams competing each having won regional competitions in over thirty U.S. states and five regions in China. 

Training for a triathlon

I have hired a personal trainer to assist me with anaerobic training and nutrition while I run, bike, and swim each week to get ready to complete at least three triathlons this year. I want to do three because this will allow me to be nationally ranked for my age group through USA Triathlon. Not that this matters, but I might as well set a goal, right?

The biggest hurdle for me, honestly, is going to be swimming in open water. I have a huge phobia for some reason, but I am confident that I will overcome this. My first race will be a sprint triathlon at French Creek State Park here in Pennsylvania on May 18.

Publishing my mom’s children’s book

Back in the early nineties my mom wrote and illustrated three children’s books. She sent one of them out to publishing houses and despite getting good feedback and encouragement, she stopped sending it out. I worked with her back then to self-publish that book “Just the Right Kind”, something much less common back then and much, much more cumbersome. When she moved here to Pennsylvania I found two other books she had worked on and have been digitizing and laying out one of them to publish through the Kindle program at Amazon. The book is in its third draft and in my humble opinion looks amazing, mainly because my mom has a true gift for illustration and writing. Mom doesn’t remember writing the book but having seen the early drafts is quite excited about it. I plan on hosting a release party of sorts for her and both selling the books on Amazon and signed copies through the Etsy site I run for her. 

Gardening and making freezer jam

I am two days away from starting pepper plants from seed in our basement. I purchased some ten different super hot to mild pepper seeds last week and will be using a heated bed and seed starting trays to grow the peppers, the only plants I truly had success with last summer. I’ll also grow basil and tomatoes and lettuce, fighting the squirrels and blight along the way. I also am going to start growing mushrooms. Once we get to May and June I’ll jam strawberries, cherries, and blackberries. I might do less than last year, as my freezer is still full of all three. The rule of thumb is that they will last a year, but I’ve gotten a bit more than a year and I’ll push it again this summer. I’m also going to make salsa this year, especially having the peppers to work with. 

The Corndog Cookbook and corndoggo.co website

I am going to up my game this year on the heels of helping my mom with her book. Now that I understand the process better I am finally going to write The Official Corndog Cookbook, something I’ve been thinking about since 1988. I’m also going to officially launch my corndog empire through the website (which does not yet exist except that I purchased the domain name) and a social media campaign. This is a passion project, not something I would consider a business venture. I know nothing about running any kind of business and would never presume to start. But, when it comes to corndogs, the world is lacking.

Recording and publishing two albums of music

I am going to follow through this year with producing two albums, the first a collection of songs I wrote in the 80’s and 90’s that I left on the shelf but that are related to my early years as a camp counselor in Vermont, a companion album to “Fairlee” that I produced and published in the mid 1990’s. This one is called “Beside Fairlee” a play on the B-sides of 45 rpm records from the fifties and sixties, the songs on the opposite side of the records that were less known. I’m also going to produce an album of science songs that I wrote over my years of being a middle school science teacher. I have plenty of material for complete albums here, so this is a matter of recording, mixing, and producing. 

Redesigning my office/shop/maker-space/art-studio/recording-studio, aka the basement

I recently was given a plethora of new tools, so many that my shop is currently unusable, its space consumed with boxes and, among other things, a planer, a joiner, a router table, a second band saw, a second drill press, and an air filter. This is having me rethink the use of that space. We’ve moved our Peloton upstairs and the workout space isn’t needed anymore so I’ll be knocking down walls (not anything load bearing) and creating more functional work spaces, trying to control my flat surfaces disease as Dave calls it, where if there is a flat surface I lay things down on it. Along with creating the spaces mentioned, I am going to dedicate an area to storage instead of scattering storage all over the place. Lots of stuff to donate and/or throw away in this project.

Building a master bedroom closet 

When Wendy and I bought our house with my late-nineties teacher’s salary we were forced to compromise a bit to let the house grow with our growing family. Because of this our master closet is not that masterful. Though his project might not happen right away, I want to use a window in our room as an entry to a ten by ten closet built in the rafters of our first addition. The space is there and I have the skills for this, but it will take a permit, an engineering proposal and professional plans. Honestly, it might be something we just hire someone to do for us, but it’s also the kind of project I love.

Running poetprojects.com

Very meta here, but this blog post is part of the major project of mine, writing poetry and blogging for my website. I have multiple projects under this umbrella and moving forward I am going to work on promoting the site as well as sticking to a regular posting schedule for each of the projects themselves. This is the project I most love right now and the one that feeds all of the others. I am playing with a side project to publish the first year of the website as a book of essays and poetry.

That’s enough. The list doesn’t include a few more things I’ve been thinking about, but it’s far more than enough to keep me busy. Hopefully having made the list I won’t start taking on other projects as well, or at least nothing of substance. 

Knowing how things go, I know that’s unlikely. 

I am prone to distraction and a compulsion to solve problems which turn into rabbit holes. Here’s hoping that I pause before jumping into them.