A Look Around

Quick question. Is the Redline Project remarkable?

Though rhetorical, I imagine my readers to be split on the matter. One perspective says this initiative is nothing more than a hobby and a blog - a dual claim of ownership that far too many Americans can make.

Between yesterday and today, I landed in blog spaces covering golf swings, copyright laws, the healing wonders of the acai berry, and sadly enough, the possibiity that the National Enquirer may receive a Pulitzer Prize for excellence in journalism. To start a blog, one must have three things: internet access, a username, and a password. That's it.

There is a term for efforts that span the course of a year, often with accompanying blog entries. They are called '365 projects' (or perhaps '366 projects' should they fall on a leap year). For every one of these startups that manages to go viral, I estimate there are 1,000 others that get noticed by a score or less of regular visitors. Multiply that out again to find the quantity of 365 projects that make it past the first month.

Why? Because American life is startlingly packed - not simply busy in one area, but chock full of a million different commitments pulling in as many directions.

I make mention of this because I feel as a spider would if eight predators were yanking on each of its legs. With only a handful of weeks between today and the glorious day my soon-to-be son will finally come home from South Korea, I have a dozen or more items to accomplish and many more obligations yanking me away from progress.

In less than a week, I will write the 100th Redline Project post. With as much content here as would be found in a brief novel, my commitment to realizing the goals listed in this page's header should be apparent. Despite the my drive to succeed, I fear that all corners of life will tug, tug, tug until I have nothing left to give, and this project would fall to the wayside.

In a word, burnout.

Last night, I recorded 90 percent of a song's final version. This makes four tracks of ten (or more if there is time - insert sarcastic inflection here) that are nearly wrapped. Completing this album is so near I can almost smell sweet victory, and yet somehow distant enough to seem well out of grasp.

Since I started chiseling away at this idea in January, the paradox of so close yet so far away has haunted every day of this quarter-year. I plod on somehow, and inch ever closer to making a reality of this romantic pipe dream.

So, is the Redline Project remarkable? Should I manage to sculpt it into an accomplishment, it may someday become so. Until then, I think the unfortunately true answer is, 'No, it is not.'