Do you feel passionate about your work in progress?

Over the last six months (they flew by very quickly!) I hit a snag with a perfume I've been working on. I had reached the point where a few people were telling me that they like it (mildly) -- but I didn't. It wasn't right in my mind, not smooth, not beautiful, not artful, not something I wanted to bottle and sell with my name on it. I had hit a wall. I couldn't see what direction to go in to pull out this project and make this fragrance something that would please me -- something I could offer with pride. My ardor cooled. My passion subsided. I put the project aside.

Now, six months later, I'm ready to go back at it -- with a passion. Why? Because the other day I smelt a fragrance that jarred me into action. Not that I wanted to imitate this other fragrance. I didn't. But it had a note in it -- a very, very common note -- that seemed to say to me, "Use me and your problem with be solved." So my first step, the one that ignited my passion again, was to visualize this new concept -- to mentally put together certain aroma materials -- that will give me this fragrance I really want.

Of course this new mental visualization is only the first step. There will be lots of balancing, lots of adjustments, to get the proportions right. And I may have to change other materials that were part of my original formula. But now it will come together. I know it with certainty.

This is a men's fragrance I'm working on. But, unlike my other two men's fragrances, this one is intended to be more mainstream, more conventional, more acceptable to women -- without being boring. Women tolerate Blackberry (some women use it themselves, so I am told) but I have yet to find a woman who had a kind word for Toxic -- which, to me, is a modern masterpiece I'm happy to wear any day I'm NOT going to a social event or to a meeting with women. They just don't understand.

We can all put out fragrances that are bland and and acceptable and don't rattle anyone's cage. But these aren't fragrances we work at with passion. When we feel a passion our work we swing for the fences. We strive for the home run. We go at it all or nothing. We don't stop until we've convinced ourselves that we've produced a masterpiece. What others think simply doesn't register.