I’m headed to PyCon today, and I’m reminded about how it feels like summer camp, in mostly good ways, but also in a tricky way.

You take some time off from your “real” life, you go somewhere else, you hang out with old friends and meet some new friends. You do different things than in your real life, some are playful, some take real work. These are all good ways it’s like summer camp.

Here’s the tricky thing to watch out for: like summer camp, you can make connections to people or projects that are intense and feel like they could last forever. You make friends at summer camp, or even have semi-romantic crushes on people. You promise to stay in touch, you think it’s the “real thing.” When you get home, you write an email or two, maybe a phone call, but it fades away. The excitement of the summer is overtaken by your autumnal real life again.

PyCon can be the same way, either with people or projects. Not a romance, but the exciting feeling that you want to keep doing the project you started at PyCon, or be a member of some community you hung out with for those days. You want to keep talking about that exciting thing with that person. These are great feelings, but it’s easy to emotionally over-commit to those efforts and then have it fade away once PyCon is over.

How do you know what projects are just crushes, and which are permanent relationships? Maybe it doesn’t matter, and we should just get excited about things.

I know I started at least one effort last year that I thought would be done in a few months, but has since stalled. Now I am headed back to PyCon. Will I become attached to yet more things this time? Is that bad? Should I temper my enthusiasm, or is it fine to light a few fires and accept that some will peter out?