One of our grown kids recently tried to save me from embarrassing myself:

HIM "Mom. The whole 'go big or go home' idea--"

I jumped in.

ME "Go big or go bust."

He nodded, acknowledging the irrelevant fine point.

HIM "Whatever. The 'go big' thing has a certain urgency to it. There's a finite kind of excitement implicit in it. What day are you up to, eighty or something?"

ME "We're way over a hundred."

He shook his head, wincing with pity.

HIM "No. Stop it. It's WRONG. Just STOP."

Thinking back on the conversation, I don't think I even tried to explain myself or to argue with him. I've been completely committed to this daily journal/blog and had never imagined an urgency issue. I let his point of view sink in a little to see if I agreed with it at all. That's how I generally function - pure gut instinct, which told me:

GUT INSTINCT "Are you crazy? Give up? You've hardly begun."

So it was nice to go down to the basement to look for something else and notice last Fall's potatoes on the bench. Their life force, their faith that they're using their finite energy doing what they obviously feel they're supposed to do. And this reminds me of a quote from Piet Mondrian: "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."