April 30, 2005
Back Burner
I have a beautiful stainless steel teapot, given to me years ago by my husband as a birthday gift. I will heat water for tea. After I pour the steaming water over the bag in my cup, I put the teapot on one of the back burners of the stove--still with water in it. I do not pour out the water because I think I might later get a second cup of tea. I rarely do. So, the next time I want tea I, of course, pour out this stale water that I never used for that second cup days before, and refill the teapot fresh. 
Again with enough water for about two cups. Again, rarely getting to that second cup.
Sometimes weeks will pass between cups of tea and all the water has evaporated...
Whenever in my school and other work I say "I'm going to put that [paper, project, idea, revision] on the back burner for a while," I think about this teapot. The fleeting thought is usually accompanied by a great deal of guilt. Like putting the shiny teapot on my stove's literal back burner, I know that putting a project on the figurative back burner will likely mean that I will never get to it again--or, that when I do get to the project again, it will have become so stale that I will have to start over from scratch.
In an attempt to at least document some of these ideas, I have decided to write a little about them from time to time here on this blog, a kind of "cold case file" for my abandonned projects. First I'll list some of the ideas most interesting to me and/or most likely to be rescued for further development. Then I'll take one of those ideas at a time to develop here in future posts. I may return to these entries after posting if new ideas and thoughts come to mind. I may delete whole posts if I come to think of any ideas as entirely stupid.
My notes on each "cold idea" may be very vague, random, incoherent. My idea isn't so much to fully flesh out these ideas: If I were in a position to do that these projects wouldn't be abandonned in the first place.
So, I'll be away from the blog for the next week or so. When I come back, though, prepare yourself to be amazed and enlightened (or alternately, bored and confused) by my simmering ideas.
Posted by perry032 at April 30, 2005 02:28 PM | TrackBack| Printer-friendly version