maybe its time to just 'trust the journey'

saturday, 1st february, 2014

day 153 of 365

This month has been hard. I suppose it was always going to get hard at some point, committing to something for 365 days. It might be day 150 today... or it may have been yesterday or it may be tomorrow. I don't know - I've lost track. I haven't updated my blog, or even looked at it for god knows how long. Right now, I don't want to, I don’t want to know. 

There is something strange about consistently capturing every single moment of one's life and then publishing pieces of it online in a public forum. Yet it was almost inescapable to not continue, with the reminding weight of the camera constantly slung over my shoulder and the fact I had committed and promised to finish this, unlike all those paintings I often start and discard within 10 minutes.  But then, over coffee with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, hoping to catch-up on the days that had passed between us, they mentioned off-hand something I had done this summer, something that I’d captured in a photo and they had seen on my blog… and I was suddenly thrown into the deep-end, drowning in the realisation of the big glass window I’d constructed around my life. 

It was inevitable, really.

And then I didn’t want anyone to mention it at all. I didn’t want to see the blog, I didn’t want to update, I didn’t want to load the photos onto my computer… I wanted to keep them distinctively away from everyone else, tucked safely into the bits and codes and whatever else of my little SD card. This journey was never meant for anyone else, it was for me – to see what it would take to commit to do something creative every day and if I could create something beautiful – to stop and see those fleeting moments of beauty that pass us by, so fragile and temporary. But then, I had chosen to use a public forum to make what beauty I saw accessible to others, and just as I have committed myself to continue photographing for 365 days, I guess I must continue to post since I’ve also committed to that. It's all part of it, I suppose.

It’s difficult though - I have been watching a lot of film lately, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock and lots of Sundance films - absolutely beautiful and captivating and enchanting - but film cannot be captured in photography as a verb, as a doing, as a compositional shot. And so somehow, through my commitment to photography, the things that I am unable to capture in picture become negatised, less worthy of my time, less positive. 

Maybe life is just a never-ending explosion of webbed tensions, and I’m just stuck amongst those tangles at the moment.  

January was just a difficult phase of this project.  But I started exploring film shots and its almost metaphoric of this whole process. There's an unexpected anxiety when you hand over that film roll with no idea what the photos will look like or if they will be in focus or how many will even end up being developed, even though it will cost probably at least $20 for all those moments of uncertainty… But that anxiety and eagerness to see the result is all part of it – it’s what makes checking out those developed films at the end even more exciting and rewarding and cool. 

And funnily enough, some of the film photos I had developed unexpectedly had a few photos back from day 1, back when I was excited and passionate and optimistic and ready to commit to the adventure of 365 days of photography.. So lets get back to that!

I really just need to trust the journey as a whole and hopefully, I can get back on track a little with my photos and blog. xxxx