Potential

I love supermarkets and gourmet-food stores. I love fabric stores. I love bookstores. Hardware stores, scientific-instrument stores, the gates to the showground, the first half of a major writing project.

All are full of limitless possibilities, endless potential, the giddy spark of "Hey! I know!"

And then it's time to cook the food, piece the quilt, plow through the book, build, measure, observe, understand, write. The actual work. The possibilities narrow, the potential transforms into experience, the spark either bursts into flame (rare) or phfts out into "Well, this isn't going quite as I had envisaged." Either way — flame or phft — you have to keep going.

Guess which side of half-done I am on the current project!