Sometimes, I don’t think things through.

I mean, I intentionally resist seeing the whole picture.

I started on a jamming slam this week, churning through kilos of Strawberries, rhubarb, cumquats and pears, melting them into jars with clip lids. The act of hulling, weighing, stirring and bottling kept my mind in a kind of stasis, away from planning and worry. It gave me a chance to exercise other parts of me – fingers, eyes, mouth. Writing that now I realise it sounds rather sensual. Erotic jam making. Maybe that could be a thing.

What’s for sure? It’s difficult to think beyond a mountain of produce… 

Sometimes I create challenges just so I can fight my way out of them.

I haven’t thought through who will buy this jam exactly, or even how I’ll sell it. Sitting down at my desk today I figured out that one large ruby glowing Bottle of strawberries cost me over $30 in ingredients, so really, I’ve been manufacturing gold to spread on toast. 

I’m also pretty clear right now that it doesn’t matter what this bottle is for. Not yet. It’s important that it exists. And that when it’s lined up along our bar’s green wall with its friends, all kinds of glass and colour will shatter into our plans with rainbows and remind me that sometimes we don’t do things that have an economic logic, but that they make sense in a different way. It makes sense like the painting in our upstairs office, which I bought after returning to Brisbane from Paris and which took me two years to pay off with my $19/h job. It makes sense like my cookbook library, that I I trust to our public space, hoping that no one will walk my dear books out the door. It makes sense like our garden, which soaks up any time and money I can free for it. Why should businesses only be the grounds of pragmatic plans? Well clearly I think they shouldn’t be to which this 900ml bottle of strawberry jam attests.