31 days: a self-preservation project.: April 2011

Foreword

Greetings! I'm Molly. This is my first blog experience and I'm pretty dang excited about it. There are a variety of reasons why I've decided to embark on this pseudo-assignment.
I'd like to make it clear that I am not an aspiring photographer, and I don’t pretend to be. Some of my closest friends and family are exceptionally talented in that area, but I can’t say it has ever been a genuine passion of mine.
Onto business. Recently, many of my Facebook friends caught my attention with albums titled “30 day challenge”, in which they followed a list of topics via photos that defined them. All of this for a period of - you guessed it - 30 days. I wanted to pursue this in my own way by making my own ‘list’. (Side note, I have planning this for the past few weeks; likely driving my roommate crazy by scrawling ideas onto paper in the middle of the night.) Regardless, I am excited for my ideas to come to fruition, and truly hope it turns out the way I have been imagining it. I invite you to leave comments on anything I post. I have always been a firm believer that knowing what everyone else thinks, does, in fact, matter. It puts things into perspective and allows us to be well-rounded individuals, which is definitely a quality I would hope to be recognized as.
One primary hesitation I have about this project is ultimately how self-centered it is. Completely. It can be chalked up to self-expression, art, or anything else… but in the end, things like this are primarily concerned with “me” and “I”. I struggle with this in an age of social media. Since the time I had a Myspace at age 16, I began this practice (we began this practice) of showcasing ourselves and finding endless ways to portray how unique we were. With Facebook and Twitter, I find it to be a double-edged sword. I want everyone to see… and yet, I don’t want anyone to see. Sometimes, all I really want, all I really need, is an outlet to mass-communicate my rawest emotions on a medium where no one is guaranteed to see it.
So…yes; with this project, I admit to being yet another self-dissecting 20-something. But I was programmed this way, and I have discovered a lot of important things as a result. This is about being honest with myself, regardless of all outside influences. This isn’t for you or for them, this is for me. It’s a time capsule. How will I feel tomorrow? In a week? a month? A year? Only time will tell.

Friday, April 1, 2011

And just like that,

my 31 days are completed.

And here's what I have to say about it:

I've learned that timing is everything. People are listening. The best inspiration comes at the most surprising times. You may or may not get odd looks when posing for the 10-second timer on your camera while in public. And most of all, I've learned that coming up with a cohesive and creative concept on a daily basis is not at all as easy as I thought it would be. This really challenged me, in the best of ways. I had a ton of fun and I am really grateful to have gotten a taste of what my future endeavors may be like on my own terms.

Within the first week of beginning this project, I realized that I had a lot of important decisions to make. It was one thing to post my writings on a public medium; it was entirely another to expose my innermost feelings and opinions. I knowingly ran the risk of having someone assume that I believed or acted a certain way 100% of the time based on what I had written. This made it really tough to decide what I wanted to talk about, and how honest and upfront I wanted to be. I decided on being as straightforward as I possibly could, based on my intentions described in the foreword. It was a little scary, not knowing whose eyes would be reading what I wrote, and whether or not they would agree with what I was saying. Days 10, 15, 24 and 30 were most sensitive to me, because putting my flaws out there in the open made it easy for anyone to criticize. Something that made me laugh as the month progressed was how long-winded I became... but I guess I could should have known that from Day 1.

Lastly: As of this exact moment, my blog has had 2,705 views. Two-thousand, seven-hundred and five! Never, ever, did I imagine that I would get anywhere near that number, let alone in a month's time. Additionally, I discovered that I had viewers from over ten countries other than the US. It felt incredible to see that; I can't even describe it. What truly impacted me was the support I received from friends and family, and especially people that I least expected to take an interest in what I was working on. This was a huge confidence boost towards the last week or so when I was starting to lack time and inspiration. It meant the world to me to hear some of the things others had to say, whether it was in-person or online.

So that's that. I did it! For anyone out there who is interested, I decided that I like the blogging world too much to say goodbye just yet. I'm setting up shop here from now on, but posts will be less-frequent. Thanks for listening, whoever you are out there.

My own version of a credits reel, these didn't make the cut for an actual post: