For almost three quarters of a year, I’ve been posting daily. It’s changed me a little bit.
I’ve always enjoyed writing, but having something to say on a daily basis—even for someone whose brain is often busy—is challenging. Especially when my brain is busy with things that aren’t necessarily appropriate for blogging.
But this pursuit has gotten me to think about things somewhat differently than perhaps I used to. I see things in a restaurant or a grocery store and am more thinking about larger contexts.
It doesn’t necessarily lead to me writing or posting about them—those thoughts are often largely incoherent and need time to percolate—but the noticing and the thinking are there. Sometimes they end up here.
(Or maybe daily writing has simply brought me back closer to who I was. Time and circumstances have taken a toll in some ways and I’ve lost some pieces of myself that I used to enjoy.)
That said, there have been many times that I’ve thought, “I need to write a blog post about that” and before I could type or write down the idea, it’s gone.
So much brilliance draining out into the nether!
I’ve also been making little pockets of time to take pictures. My brain is still very full with general life matters (and I haven’t even been at work!), so I haven’t done as much book learning as I would typically do in this sort of venture. I’m reading a little bit, but mostly I’m just snapping shots and also trying to learn some of the functions on the camera. (So far, I mostly don’t know how to use it but I know more than I did a couple of months ago!)
Much of photography has less to do with equipment and more to do with vision.
As I’ve started taking more pictures, I’m noticing details I wouldn’t normally notice, looking at the world just slightly differently.
Between these two pursuits, everything is a tiny bit changed. It’s an unexpected but fun shift.