Perfect description. Sounds like a great project, also.
It's something I've been thinking a lot about over the past year. Strangely it's having a dog (for 2½ years after never ever wanting one), I now have to take it for all its walks as my wife's health is failing, this gives me time for contemplation.
We have a regular walk that we do twice a day, part of it through some woods, that part is a dead end so apart from a small loop at the end so itt's back the way we came. What's this got to do with photography, I rarely take a camera. It's about looking, seeing, observing, absorbing and playing visual mind games, I'm watching how the same objects change with the seasons, weather, lighting conditions, if their wet from a rain-storm, angle of approach, position etc.
It's important to approach objects/scenes from different directions, you notice different juxtapositions possible compositions, you may miss them if you're too close.
Back in the mid 1980's I decided to work on specific photographic projects rather than make random images. The first came from some of what appeared initially to be random and others have followed from there. The worst thing we can do is just shoot randomly, we achieve nothing, personally I don't shoot random images unless I feel there's a particularly strong image, those may be the start of a new project and I keep that in mind sometimes expanding on it.
So my feeling is, do what we love, celebrate it, change when we feel like it, celebrate it, and let ourselves move and evolve. And celebrate it.
I think this comment is particularly apt, change and evolution are important, and I'd add variety, while most of my personal work is project based I'm always working on more than one, even if one predominates for a time.
Ian