Take a Closer Look (220K)I was born on July 7th, 1947. I had a wingding on my thirtieth birthday, 7/7/77. My sixtieth birthday will be 7/7/7 and getting to the party is my crap shoot. A few years ago, I developed the whim to do only what I want to do on my birthday. Not only can nobody else tell me what to do, I can't tell myself what to do; the object is to do nothing out of a sense of obligation, even the obligation to finish what I've started. The first year was a frenzy. I'd start painting, and realize, twenty minutes into it, that I was just trying to finish the painting. So I'd put the brush down and wander into the garden.
A couple years into the birthday ritual, I started painting the door to my greenhouse. I've worked on it for many hours -- it's amazing how this one activity seemed to suck my attention right into it -- on five consecutive birthdays.