Thinkin’
It’s hard to believe that we’re already closing in on the last few weeks of the project. At the same time, while last summer was a joy and something to look forward to every day, this time around has been a bit more stressful, a bit more of a chore. I’m pretty satisfied with some of the work, but a lot of it feels a little perfunctory and I’m not sure how to change that.
The biggest issue is time, I suppose. When I set out to make another run of 91 photos, I thought I would be much more able to just grab twenty minutes here or there to do some photo work. That has not been the reality. And yet, much like writing, I really enjoy the feeling of having done it, once it’s done.
All of which is to say that I’m putting a lot of thought into how to continue doing this project and this hobby that I enjoy so much, while also not having it be a daily chore. The trouble is, I know myself pretty well. If I don’t set a schedule or a deadline, I’ll never finish anything. One reason Learned stays on such a tight schedule is that I’m afraid that if I miss even a single week, I’ll never come back to it.
There are probably some issues there I ought to explore with a licensed professional, namely, why do the imaginary outcomes and pressures build up in my head so quickly that it’s easier to never do anything than to risk not meeting my own expectations for myself. But I digress.
My current thinking is that I should try redefining the goal. Instead of 91 continuous days of photos, maybe I should look at 91 photos on a theme. This lets me go kind of highbrow or lowbrow as the whims dictate, e.g., I could do 91 dragonflies or I could do 91 “moments of change” or something like that. Yeah, dragonflies sounds better to me, too.
The other thing I’m thinking about is presentation. For a number of reasons, this time around I have not been reposting anything on social media and the readership, or lack of it, reflects that. The trouble is, I’m really enjoying not posting on social media. I feel a lot better for not doing so. But I would like people to see the photos.
So I think, when this series ends, I’m going to move the site over to be a subsection of Learned, where the readership is about 10 times what it is here. Whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.