Indulge me a long and winding metaphor this morning...
When I was growing up, there was this book that made the rounds called How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell. In it the main character makes a bet with his friends that he can eat a worm every day for 15 days. And in the beginning, it’s all a very deliberate process. He fries the worm up and puts condiments on it and generally just takes his time and makes the best of it all. But by the end the novelty has worn off and he’s running out of time and he basically has to down a nightcrawler fresh out of the mud in the 11th hour to finish the challenge.
Setting aside the disgusting premise of the book and any worm welfare-based qualms you might have with the storyline…I’ve realized that How to Eat Fried Worms is a damned good take on life and, as a little microcosm of that, this project I’ve got going.
In the beginning it was all deliberate process and perfection. I’d go out each day and take the photos, come home and comb through them, fret over my choice for the next day’s image, fine-tune the edits ad infinitum, research the subject for the caption, and produce the next day’s image listing and email.
And don’t get me wrong. It’s still like that plenty of days. There’s a little less fretting about the subject choice, perhaps, because I’ve learned that with infinite days there are infinite choices to be had, and they can all come with time. But I’d like to think that more often than not this process has my full attention.
But then there are plenty of other days when I just have to eat the nightcrawler. When the novelty has worn off and the thing just needs to get done. And in the end, just like the training runs that you least want to do, those days can teach us the most and be the most rewarding. Because getting it done—keeping that promise to yourself—is easy when you feel all of the passion and energy and have all of the time. But keeping that promise on the rough days…that’s another level.
Last night I ate the nightcrawler. I’d woken up at 2 a.m. to run the Wine & Dine Half Marathon. (My 100th runDisney race, if you’ll indulge me that pat on my own back!) I ran back to the Boardwalk after, showered and packed, and made the excruciating 40-minute drive home due to traffic and road closures, smacking myself in the cheek the whole time to keep myself alert behind the wheel.
Short of a fitful hour long nap after getting back, I then worked with my mom and Sam until around 11:30 that night making candles and packing orders for the Core Memory Pop-Up. They left this morning so we were making use of every last second we had together to get stuff done before I started having to do everything solo.
And only then, at 11:30 p.m., after being awake for 21½ hours, running a half marathon, and working all day, did I sit down to do this.
I love doing a race picture after runDisney weekends. They might be simpler and need some work, but they hold a lot of memories for me and I hope they do for some of you, too. (And I was smacking myself for using the torch picture on Friday…it’s the epitome of a race view even if I took it last week and would have been so perfect today.)
But I picked this one. A simple shot—Spaceship Earth over the water with a quiet, empty monorail track wrapping through the foreground, taken toward the end of the 10K before sunrise on Saturday morning. I edited it to enhance its simple beauty, stripping out everything but that big golf ball and the track over the water and their mirror reflections. And I just…got it done. And honestly I kind of love it.
Cheers to just eating the nightcrawler when you have to.