The rules

"Year Of" projects by nature are governed by certain rules that go beyond or sometimes contrary to the rules of daily life as organized by work, family, religion, or society. The project itself seems designed for its authors and willing or unwilling spouses to see the effects of forcing themselves to an extreme of just one thing be it eating, reading, travel, or sticking to certain somewhat artificial rules that most of us wouldn't have the desire or stickwithitness to complete.

Right now, how many "Year Of" projects lie half finished in someone's basement, linger on hard drives, yellow on walls of makeshift garage studios, hum to themselves in the pages of notebooks tucked next to checkbooks and phonebooks. But even before I can follow these rules, the first rule must be to keep at it, so that there will be a project, even if it does go no further than an audience of one or two, a few mouse clicks on an anonymous blog in a flood of anonymous blogs.

Which brings me to my conversation with Dr. Sweety (I used to call my wife ‘Sweety,” but since she’s started her PhD program she has been given a new title!). A few days after I proposed the idea to her and started telling all my friends and family of my intentions for my upcoming year, Dr. Sweety asked me, "So you want to blog about these memoirs and eventually turn it into a book. But what is your book really going to be about? It just doesn't seem enough just to read other people's books and write about what they've already done for a whole year, when you're just going to try it for a month."

Originally, I had intended to attempt what each "Year Of" author had done--at least to some degree--each month when I was reading his or her book. When I read Barbara Kingsolver's memoir of eating local foods, I would shop at farm stands and look for restaurants that used local ingredients, even work more in my makeshift all-potted-plants garden. When I read Joshua Foer's book on becoming a memory champion, I would use his techniques to improve my memory. Maybe try to remember more about my childhood and write about what these internal journeys brought me. When reading Julie Powell, of course, I would have to cook recipes from that other Julia's book.

Dr. Sweety could see she had taken a bit of the wind out of my sails. "Well, you can do what you want," she said. "And I can't stop you. But I just wonder if you shouldn't read the 'Year Of' books first and then decide on the topic you'd really like to do."

And she has a point. Am I really the kind of person who goes to the extremes these authors did, even if just for a year? Perhaps not. The rules of the project must have some give--or be ready to be tossed out at a moments notice. But it all comes back to rule number one. So whether I blog every day, try exactly what the authors tried, or just write about thinking about trying it, as long as I follow rule number one--perhaps the most extreme rule of all, I can call my year a success.