I’ve always had a fascination with documenting life through journals and photos mostly, and I love seeing other’s projects as well. I’m envious of the people who have the sticking power to see a journal through to the final page. For year’s I’ve struggled to keep a regular practice of this…I’ve failed many many attempts at project 365’s and I have stacks of unfinished journals through the years. Don’t get me wrong they’ve all served some purpose at any given point in time but I don’t have a single completed project. I think I’ve failed because I haven’t given the effort to make it a part of who I truly am, my life feels boring and uneventful most days. I mean c’mon am I really supposed to document silly things like chores?
The answer is yes…EVERY SINGLE DAY is a gift, the mundane is a gift, and it took a global pandemic for me to open my eyes and see that life is worthy of documenting even when it’s unremarkable. I get a great deal of enjoyment from seeing the things I have captured over the years even in their uncompleted stages. One day, my pets will be gone, one day I will be gone, and even as boring as I think my life is, it’s worth keeping those memories because I never know when I will need to go see those memories.
As much as I love photos, I really want to start getting into visual story with video. Today I started my 4th 1 Second Every Day (aka 1SE) video project where I embark on capturing daily 1 second video clips over the course of the next year. At the end of the year I will have a highlight reel of my life through my eyes. I haven’t completed one of these projects yet and I hope try #5 will be my first completed 1SE. I won’t know until I try again and my goal is to get creative with the boring and make it remarkable. I’ve put a few things in place to help me not forget in these early days. One…give myself grace, life isn’t perfect, or always video worthy but it’s my job to make it a success. Two, I’ve created 2 daily alarms on my phone to help me remember to get my daily video clips. Three….even if I miss a day, I will use a previous video…no one will really know and no one really cares if I did that July 22 or July 23…don’t let perfection be the death of this project.
To kickoff this project I’ve included a video clip from days past at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum Fall Color Festival. This marks the beginning of the many snippets I will be taking in the future. Sadly with COVID, I don’t know that I’ll get to participate in any events like this as we as humans have isolated ourselves away from friends and family, covered our faces and stand 6 feet apart from each other in gatherings of 10 or less, so who knows when and if life will ever return to days like this. This is why it’s so important to document life.