Three Sixty Five

I started Project 365 on my birthday last year as a way to keep my mind off of the crud that accompanied my first year of college. No cool story about improving my photography or documenting my life for posterity or keeping family and friends informed. I just needed to have something, anything, to look forward to every day. I needed an occupation. In all honesty, 365 was my saving grace.

Some days were easy: game days, dinner parties, concerts, costumes. Some days were hard, and I wound up taking pictures of flash cards or bookshelves or iPhone screen shots. Naturally, I tried to avoid these days since they made me look like a total lame-o to my parents who, at the time, were the only people I could imagine being interested enough to look at the album. I found myself participating more. I sought out things I could do that would make an interesting picture. I plucked up courage to ask for pictures that I never would have otherwise - and some of those pictures are the best memories. As sappy as it sounds, my life was definitely altered by 365. I began to enjoy all of these things I was forcing myself to do just for pictures. I began to realize that I did actually do more cool stuff than I ever thought. I began to like college.

As the days progressed, more and more people started to ask me about 365. It was neat, but also sort of unnerving to have my life available for anyone to browse.

Now that it's over, I still find myself on the lookout for things to photograph that will make my days look interesting. Then I breathe sighs of relief when I remember that I'm not accountable for documenting every day anymore.

One thing's for sure: I would never have completed 365 without all of the people who let me awkwardly take pictures with/of them, the people who refrained from pointing out how strange I was while taking pictures of me when I asked them to, the people who leapt up at midnight when I exclaimed, "I haven't taken a picture today!!! Quick, do something cool!", the people who suffered my demands of "I need a picture today, so we better do something cool.", and the people who actually looked at all of these pictures and made me feel validated. Thanks for thinking 365 days of my life were worth 365 pictures!

The whole album resides here.