As a writer, what does it mean to be between projects? I don’t think I’m crazy here, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be likened to, say, a lawyer between cases or a CEO between meetings. There’s a panicky, disoriented, adrift nature to a writer’s predicament that I doubt a proctologist feels between asses.

And the point here isn’t to poke ill-willed fun at what are extremely reputable professions. In fact, refer to my previous blog on the relationship between the writer and the normative workforce, “Deposits and Dividends,” if you don’t believe that I find worthiness in most vocations.

For a writer, however, being between projects is like going on a vacation having packed the idea that there’s no home to come back to. Granted, there’s a feeling of accomplishment at having arrived at the end of the previous project with sanity still riding shotgun. But, without another project on the horizon, there’s nothing to set a GPS on, nothing to massage mentally on an endless basis whether at the laptop or in the shower. There is nothing to stress over—except for the resounding fact that there’s nothing to stress over.

A project, by definition, is bracketed by time. It starts. And it ends. Of course, everything comes framed in time’s bookends, but a project keeps that fact salient. Whereas the work of most jobs remains relatively constant over time, a project—no matter how much of yourself you’ve invested in it—will end, and we know it. Sure, we might anticipate relief at such a juncture. But we know we have to start the process all over again anyway.

For extra pressure, we’re also well aware that the potential projects we’re mulling aren’t the only things that come with a beginning and ending, a projected span. Speaking for myself, I have a gazillion ideas, but I feel I have to be selective. After all, who wants to spend months or even years on a given project only to have it lose its allure, its meaning? So the time spent on the bridge between projects has the extra burden of demanding talented discernment. But I’m the kind of person who can ruminate for relative decades over which fat shirt to wear out of my pitifully miniscule inventory. (Not buying a bigger wardrobe is called motivation, all right?) So deciding how I’m going to spend every working day for an undetermined time to come only protracts my between projects status, paralyzing me in my favorite avoidance behaviors like washing dishes, straightening the house, and doing laundry.

Have I mentioned that my life appears the most put together when I’m floundering in my work?