Maybe you run.
Maybe you journal.
Perhaps you meditate or do
yoga.
Me? I take a photo. More specifically, in 2018 I took a PHOTO OF
MY HAND* every day.
2018 was the 5th
year I deliberately took a photo of something every day. In 2014, I photographed the bed I woke up in
every morning. In 2015, it was my
FEET. 2016 and ’17 were my HAND, and I
continued that subject into 2018.
I would guess at this
point that your reaction might be, “Ummm, why?”. And that is a logical question, a question
that I now realize has many answers. But
the most honest, seemingly important answer is this:
Taking a specific photo
every day grounds me. I have one shot at it – I choose the location
of my photo based on the most significant event of my day. But hey, days change! What if I commit to my hand photo at 10:00
am, then “something better” comes along in the evening?? Well, that’s life, and it is a good lesson
for someone like me. **
My brain runs about 2,500
MPH. I am very, very rarely doing only
one thing at a time. When I cook, I
listen to the news and do laundry, too.
When I drive, I sing or tune in to NPR.
When I do SOMETHING, I am almost always doing SOMETHING ELSE, too.
But when I take my photo a
day?? in that moment, those moments, I JUST.
DO. THAT. I focus.
I breathe. I am deliberate. I am me.
If you know me, you know
that I really abhor ENDINGS. That could
be why, out of the 5 years of photos I have taken, only the very first year
(2014) has been organized into a video before now (and that took a couple of
years after the last bed photo was shot to make!). But now that I have a zillion photos “in the
can”, an ending to the whole shebang is long off, so I figured I could go ahead
and do the 2018 video and not have to fear FINISHING the projects!
Looking back through the
year of pictures is, to me, amazing. I
can remember so much about where I was and what I did each day, solely by a
single photo. This year, some of the
pictures made me cry; 2018 was a sad year and some photos remind me of that. But some of the photos made me laugh – like
the one with the Elvis impersonator whose sold-out (free) show was in he public
library of all places… The one making cut out larger than life copies of my
sister’s smile… Or the shot where I can
see manatees swimming.
Of course, once they are
all organized, the nerdy side of me can also look for statistics in the photos:
·
How many photos
were taken on a beach or are water related:
35 (this does not count the 3
days of hand photos taken while looking longingly out a hotel window at a river
while I was at a conference I disliked)
·
How many photos are
related to a medical setting: 43
(granted, that includes 1 foot massage and 1 body massage, but those are medical,
right?)
·
How many photos where
I was wearing my wedding or engagement ring:
33 (you can see I don’t slip
it on very often!):
·
How many nights I
did not sleep in 1 of 2 “my own beds” (the Big Yellow House or the Cottage
of Cheese): 142
·
How many photos
show my nails polished: 11 (the
curse of being a sign language interpreter)
·
How many photos are
politically related: 16
·
How many days did
I forget to take a hand photo: 2 (that is unusual, I have been doing
this for years and always remember, but it was an odd year to say the least)
·
How many photos
were related to CULTURE (art, theatre, music…):
89
·
How many states
photos were taken in: 19 (and 2 countries)
·
How many times I
look at shots of my hands and thought, “Those look like my mother’s hands…”: countless
But I don’t do this
project for statistics. I do it for ME. I do it to make art. To create. To be present.
To live.
I would suggest that you
might want to take up a photo a day yourself, but I think it is pretty apparent
from my gushing here that I am a fan and the recommendation goes without
saying. Don’t wait until a new year
starts – if 2018 taught me anything it is that new years are not
guaranteed.
A photo a day. Simple project. Simple life.
Profound (for me) impact.
Ready to see it? I LOVE IT - I hope it inspires and delights you at least a fraction of what it does me. Here you go: 2018 In My Hands
*I actually take 3 photos
of my hand (in the same place) every day, just in case they are blurry. That means over the course of a year I take
at least 1095 photos of my HAND (actually more cuz some days I snap an extra
for good measure)
**In 2018, I let myself
change subjects one time, January 16th. We were helping take care of our neighbor as
she was dying, and a special moment came up that I knew I had to capture even
though I had already taken my hand photo for the day.
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