Finding a plumber and getting the kitchen sink fixed; getting a new computer; raising a 3-year-old boy and a newborn boy: “togetherness projects,” Aimee and I call them.

That was July. August is our month, at Aimee’s instigation, to do a “Whole 30:” a 30-day dietary regimen that focuses on the elimination of processed foods and grains. One can imagine the complications subsequent upon such guidelines.

What about…. Beer? Rice? Jelly beans? Ice cream? Coke? Lemonade? Bourbon?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Do you even have to ask? No. Do you know the answer already? Yes. But should whoever’s idea this was have to come right out and tell you that you can’t have those things because that person should have to concretely reckon with the woeful face of the one corralled into this? Yes, that person should have to look you right in the eye and say, “No, you cannot have that cold soda pop on a 95-degree day after you’ve been working outside for two hours.” That person then has the opportunity to say, “Instead, have this delicious cold lime water in a glass filled with ice cubes!”

Thirty days is all. On the 31st day, one can have a nice bowl of ramen with a few slices of bread and a cold soda and think, “I miss the days when I was exalted by that higher mission.”

A sense of mission is a glorious thing.

A diet is such a mission, as is training for a marathon and undergoing a spiritual trial such as Lent and Ramadan. After the Seattle Marathon of Thanksgiving weekend, December arrives with its absence of training runs and its laments over quickly falling out of shape.

How to recapture that sense of mission? What to do next?

A mission requires commitment, sacrifice, effort, a deadline, and a concrete result. One cannot say, “Live your life as well as you can,” because there’s no deadline.

A New Year’s resolution can work, because it is limited by that one year.

A poetry project works because a commitment is there to write the poetry on a schedule.

The Whole 30 involves the sacrifice of abstaining from the ice cream one suddenly remembers is still buried in the freezer.

Marathon training includes the effort to always run that final lap around the track, although one knows one can do it. One still has to follow through and run that last, most important lap.

Afterward, one has the memory of the exaltation of that sense of mission, and motivation to seek out new challenges.