Salvaging Project 365 - 2014

A friend of mine introduced me to the concept of Project 365 back in December of 2012.  Basically you take a picture a day and save your progress as a snapshot of memory from each day.  I wrote a blog about it and, by gum, it worked!  (see: http://evilchickenscratch.blogspot.com/2012/12/project-365.html.) 

I was quite happy with the way that 2013 came together (see: http://evilchickenscratch.blogspot.com/2013/12/project-365-this-was-2013.html) and high hopes for 2014.  Unfortunately, things fell apart when my laptop crashed and burned and I had to start saving my pictures to a guest identity shell on my new hard drive on my new laptop that has designs against me.  It took the process of posting pictures from simplicity to chore faster than my flash drive & camera could keep up.

 

{NOTE: if you want happier fodder, skip the following paragraph now.}

And then there’s the content.  For reasons that are my own let me simply say 2014 sucked.  It was a downer.  Unfortunately, this underlying current permeated all things that I touched during the year – including my Project 365.  I look back now at the highlights of the album and can see desperation instead of inspiration and that both saddens and emboldens me.  Case in point, my Pinterest page where I hosted 2014’s Project 365 ends on 9/10/14 with an abysmal photo of a collection of God forsaken office cubicles.  I look further back and find that many of the photos I took were at or performing some function at one of my jobs or going to or from one job to another.  There are not as many pictures of things I honestly wanted to see or do.  There is a lot less of my family & friends there, a lot less wonder, and heaps less of joy.  THIS, however, is what emboldens me.  You see, Gentle Reader, I understand that time is fleeting and for all the bad things that encroach upon us we simply can’t sacrifice our lives, our wonder, and our joy on unfit alters.  Anything less will make you desperate and that desperation is far too high a price to pay.  I will do my utmost in the coming years not to repeat the mistakes made in 2014.  Life is far too short.  There are too many things that truly matter to become bogged down in all the things that don't.  It is easy to trap oneself and to forget to live. 

{Ok, depressing paragraph is now over.} 

So here is my filtered and salvaged version of my Project 365 Twenty Fourteen.

 1/3/14 - Footprints in the snow

 1/6/14 - Color in the evening sky

4/25/14 - "Life will find a way." - Ian Malcolm

5/13/14 - Morning dew

7/17/14, Sunlight

7/19/14 - The Obon Festival in Seabrook, NJ 

8/13/14 - Weymouth Furnace & the Egg Harbor River

9/9/14 - Auditions for, "August Osage County" as seen through the doors to the theater

There are a couple of good ones that bring back interesting moments.  If you have the urge to do a Project 365 then I wish you well.  It is a journey and one that you will be the better for taking.  I’m opting out of a Project 365 for 2015.  In its place I’ll put a file on Pinterest to represent the good things of 2015. 

So, apart from the tone of this particular blog, I approach 2015 with boatloads of hope for the future.  I’m ready for the change.  Bring it on.  HAPPY NEW YEAR, Gentle Reader and during this next trip around the sun, never forget to live!