New Goals

Alright so here's the thing. I don't have a picture for today. Well, I do but I'm not posting it because it's boring to me. Much like this blog so far this year. I feel like I've fallen too much into "Aaaand here's what I did today!" mode vs. using this blog as it was intended - to try and challenge myself to be creative and consistently exercise my eye on a daily basis. I'm not saying that last every picture in 2010 was good, or interesting, or artistic, or creative (yeah! I separated artistic and creative - I have been reading Sir Ken Robinson's stuff lately...you should check it out), or non-"Aaaand here's what I did today!" Some of it was more less than creative for sure. But that's to be expected, and the point was that I was trying to take more creative pictures.

Or at least I felt like I was. Whether the end result was really something creative or interesting is a different topic all together.

The point, I think, is in order to challenge my brain and my creative muscles I need to switch up this challenge a bit because I'm bored and feel like I'm stagnating. SO! I saw this on...I don't remember actually...twitter, probably: This American Life: Theme of the Week. The group basically follows each week's This American Life theme. You listen to the show and then post pictures that illustrate that theme, or your interpretation of it. What a great idea! I like it because a) I love This American Life and this gives me a good excuse to take the time to listen to it, and b) it'll be a fun way to have a topic and have to think about it more thoroughly and how I'd interpret and express it. I think it's going to be kind of hard. So far the topics haven't necessarily been easy to figure out how to depict, or at least how to depict in non-obvious ways. But I'm up for a challenge!

I'm kind of thinking I'll try to listen to the show on the day its posted, and then each day take a picture (well probably more, but I'll post one) that I feel fits the theme. Then by the end of the week I can choose the 2 I want to post to the flickr site! I am afraid I'm going to feel slightly embarrassed by my photos compared to everyone else on there, but no matter. Letting yourself feel embarrassed and inferior is part of how we improve and grow, right? Right.

That doesn't mean I won't post pics not along the theme. I am still going to let myself take pictures of whatever strikes my fancy, and sometimes that might be an "Aaaand this is what I did today!" post. Which is ok. It's all about challenging oneself, and exercising one's creative muscles which always means finding a way to be flexible.

We'll see how it goes!