I have to stay busy, because I’m like everyone else. My couch is comfortable, I love to eat food, and I like to sleep in. Once I’m up I can drink coffee all day, staring out a window or reading a book.

But I make my living from outsideness, kindling that feeling people are chasing when they walk out of their homes and into the world at large, so I have to keep moving.

I’m also not a great planner, so having a project or a slate of projects as it turns out, keeps me off the couch (too much) and moving forward with good general order. I don’t wonder what I’m supposed to do next. I have projects, and I have friends working on them with me, people who expect me to show up.

If you want to do some big stuff, put yourself on the hook for it.

I’ve already written about Project 200. If that endeavor didn’t overlap so neatly with Project MidState, then I’d say it’s foolhardy to have more than one big project going at a time. These things can really take over your life if you let them, and may even require a bit of self sabotage to maintain sanity and to keep your body all in one piece.

Project MidState is just a multi-day run/hike of the 99 mile long MidState trail here in Massachusetts, running from the New Hampshire border down to Rhode Island. Not every step is runnable, like the steep, stone steps up the side of Mount Wachusett, but we’ve managed to run a lot of the first forty miles now, and many of those we have also counted toward Project 200.

The MidState Trail runs through central Massachusetts, an area I seldom visit, so I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of new towns and forests. What I’ve seen so far has been beautiful. This project is also cool, because we likely wouldn’t have hatched it had we been more free to move around New England. Normally, we’d be in Vermont and New Hampshire, hiking, biking, and running around. The pandemic has forced us to look closer at where we already live, and the results have been great.