Week 1

Yay! I made it to the end of the first week! It's only four days, but still...

During week 1 I was trying to focus on patterns. You'll see that I didn't stick to this on every day. I blame this on the atrocious flu that I mentioned in my previous post.

Day 1:
I took this one at the grocery store.

1/100 sec
f/ 5.6
ISO 800
154mm (EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II)

Day 2:

I liked the pattern cast onto these bananas by a plain old plastic bin lying around my kitchen.

1/60 sec

f/5.0

ISO6400

96mm (EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II)

Day 3:

This was my view for most of the day, thanks to the god-forsaken flu. The view of our downstairs Christmas tree from the recliner. Taken with my Samsung Galaxy S3.

Day 4:

I ventured a whole three feet out of my back door to take this one (again, damned flu). I was hand-holding my camera for this shot, and I definitely should not have been. But it was freezing out and I didn't want to set up the tripod this time.

1/20sec

f/4.0

ISO6400

55mm (EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II)

So, no real keepers here, but at least I haven't missed a day yet! Next week, my tentative theme is "Winter".

The flu grinch who stole Christmas

The flu finally caught up with me. I spent the last 24 hours wishing I would die. After trying various cocktails of OTC drugs to no avail, the only thing that has helped has been NyQuil, due to its ability to knock me out cold. I'm seriously considering just drinking a fresh dose every time I wake up until this nightmare is over. My ass hurts, and I can't tell if it's from lying around so much or from the joint aches that come with this adorable disease. I finally managed to drag myself into the shower, where I thought for sure I was going to cough up my left lung. Have you ever coughed so hard that you nearly knocked yourself down? I'm so done with this.

Husband seems to be getting slightly better, which is a relief because who else would take care of our boy? Boy seems to be feeling better at times, with periods of intense whiny/clingy-ness parsed out at unpredictable intervals. No OTC meds appear to help him feel better either. 

Flu: now that you have effectively ruined what remained of our Christmas vacation, please now get the fuck out.

We don't say these things in public, eh?

Today is day 2, and I've yet to take today's picture. Day 2! For pete's sake! I do have a plan, though. Last night, I spotted a potential photo in my son's room while I was up in the middle of the night soothing him as he suffers through the flu. Today has been sheer misery, with a doctor's appointment and a car puking incident thrown in just for good measure. I didn't take my camera with me on our miserable outing, because I would have felt like a schmuck stopping to shoot photos somewhere while my son and husband are both sick in the car. But, I will get today's photo done, one way or another.

I was toying with the idea of using Facebook as a commitment device for this project, but at this point I'm more likely to just delete my facebook account entirely. Today, I came across a post from a friend that went something along these lines:

The gym was so empty today! So much for those resolutions, I guess. Oh well, all the better for me, because I didn't have to share the equipment and I've already managed to lose my Christmas weight!

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive about my Christmas weight (and my 4th of July weight, and my Valentine's day weight, etc) but this struck a wrong chord with me. I'm happy that my friend is feeling fit and excellent and very proud of herself (these sort of braggy comments have been pretty common from her on facebook for the last 6 months or so). But at the same time, rubbing your success in the face of your friends seems like a bad idea, even if you do have the benefit of the internet veil between you. If it's not something you'd say right to someone's face in person, I feel like you shouldn't say it online. And the really surprising thing is that the girl who made this comment is totally sweet in person. I've never heard her say anything remotely braggy in person. She's very sweet and adorable. And then there's facebook.

Which brings me to my point: Why do I even use facebook at all? Nine times in ten, when I log on, it's just to peruse through the news feed. I rarely post anything myself (status updates, pictures, etc). And most of the time I'm left just feeling worse about myself than when I started. And yes, I know, you can hide all sorts of things there now and I don't really have to read folks' humble-bragging if it's just going to upset me. And I know I can un-friend people---I've done a mass un-friending exercise once or twice before. But at this point, it just feels like it fuels the negativity and feelings of inadequacy in my own life. In real life, if I find myself in a situation where a certain aspect of my life (friendship or whatever) is bringing me down more than it is lifting me up, I cut it out like a cancer. So, I don't see why I don't just do exactly that with facebook.

In other news, the following things can just go ahead and suck it:

1. The flu,
2. My left foot, which is too slowly recovering from foot surgery, making it impossible for me to actually exercise and deal with my own Christmas weight, and
3. Cabin fever, which I can't escape due to everyone else in my house being sick with the flu. 

A new year, a new project

I just deleted half a dozen old blogs that got off the ground and then fizzled, which really makes me wonder why in the heck I'm even considering trying to do this blog (or this project) in the first place. In general, my life currently feels like a mess of loose ends and I just want to take on some kind of a challenge and see it through to the end this time. So, because I'm trying to improve my photography skills, and because every single article I read says that I need to shoot more often in order to improve, I thought maybe I should give a 365-day photo challenge a try. It's definitely big and challenging enough that I'll feel like I've accomplished something if I actually complete it, but not really huge or life-changing.

I'm going to set my own rules here. I have enough of living within everyone else's rules everywhere else in my life, so I'm just going to throw this thing together however I want to do it. To say that I've successfully completed the project, I just need to take one picture every day of 2014. It can be with my DSLR or with my smartphone.

I'm planning to post a weeks worth of photos all at once, at the end of the week, beginning on Sunday evening (1/5/14). Ideally, I'll stick to a theme for each week. Also ideally, they'll all be taken with my DSLR and they'll all be beautiful and astounding works of art. In reality, I'll probably end up with a little of everything, and most likely very few of them will be "keepers", much less works of art.

I'm also considering posting these photos to facebook and advertising to my friends that I'm taking on this project. Obviously, the idea behind that is that there will be added pressure to keep going if I know that there are people who know about my project. Since I'm really not a fan of facebook in general, I haven't made a firm decision on this yet.

I'm also hoping that along the way, I find that I am actually capable of completing something that I set out to do. It's been a while since I did that with anything, and that has me sort of bummed out. I get to the end of a year and look back and feel like I have little to show for all of my frantic rushing around. So, while the primary purpose here is to document my 365 project, I'm hoping this will be an outlet for me in other ways.