I have always loved photography.
As a kid, I made home movies with my dad’s camcorder. I won my middle school’s video production award in eighth grade (I know, nerd). The second I get home from any travels, I immediately edit my photos and sit my friends and family down for a slideshow (double nerd).
But I just realized that, over the past decade, I’ve turned creative photography projects into a mental health lifeline for myself.
At the beginning of my post-college transitional phase, I had almost no structure. I was afraid I would never actually get a job, and I felt like I didn’t have a grip on my own life. So, I challenged myself to take one photo a day, every day, for a year—something I had seen others do online somewhere—to help give it some shape. And I did it.
In 2018, I kicked it up a notch: I recorded one second of video for 365 days straight in an effort to remember the details of a life that was burning me out.
I now have a 6-minute-long glimpse at one year of my twenties, capturing the voices and laughs of people I love, my dog who is no longer with me, and a load of adventures—everything from the extraordinary (adventures in Croatia, France, Spain, and Portugal) to the mundane (so many videos of public transportation...apparently I thought that the city bus pulling up to my stop and my own face half-asleep on my morning commute were worth remembering).
And yes, I even turned quarantine into the chance to document images from my community about the unique aspects of life in this moment, with the proclamation: “The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented time. We're living through it, so let's document it.”
Socially-distanced cheers!-ing, empty toilet paper shelves, banana bread and whipped coffee recipes, Zoom birthday and wedding celebrations, devastating newspaper headlines, school campuses frozen in time, haircuts and pedicures that are just plain weird: While a bit funny, these images are also laced with a hint of pain and a dash of anxiety. And I can already tell that we’re going to look back on them and think: That was horrible. I can’t believe we made the most of that.
You’ll notice that all of these projects started in a time of negativity. Of feeling lost, unstructured, and empty.
But looking back, I learned so much. I learned that there is at least one thing each day that is worth remembering—even the bad things—and that looking for and admitting them can make life way more interesting and fulfilling. I learned how to look at the world with even more of an artist’s eye than I used to, seeing beauty in the ordinary like I might not have before.
I learned how to literally take things one day at a time. I learned how good it feels to force yourself to just do something, even if it is “just for the picture.”
And I learned that even when life feels like a swirling, monotonous vortex of uncertainty, it’s possible to look back at a year’s worth of images and feel richness. To actually believe that just because you’re having a bad day does not mean you have a bad life.
But my favorite thing is that I had no idea what I was going to capture when I set out on these projects.
Yes, they all started from a place of low-grade depression. But each time, I captured remarkable things I had no idea were coming my way: a new job, the second date of an important relationship, world travel. It’s a lesson in abundance and trusting that it’s coming your way, even when you feel like you’re living in a place of scarcity.
So, I’m doing it again. I’m taking and posting one photo every day for all of 2021.
I kicked off this year feeling lonely and defeated by all the trauma of 2020. In a late-night thought spiral, I remembered that I’ve felt this way before, and that photography projects have gotten me out of it.
Plus there will be the added challenge of finding something special each day of a year that started off in lockdown limbo, where every day is still the same—exciting!
I’m doing this in an effort to support my intention of trusting that the world and my life are on an upward trajectory. That so many beautiful things can unfold this year, even if I have to wait for them a little while longer. Call it what you will—manifestation, self-fulfilling prophecy—but it helps me.
Who knows what new chapter of my life I’ll capture this time.