One Down, 11 to Go

January was a hoot.  I fully anticipated being annoyed -- at least once or twice -- having to schlep my camera around every day hunting for something interesting to take a picture of.  Didn't happen.  Not once.  In fact, most days I looked forward to it.

How could I not look forward to photographing this little starlet?

I am a creature of habit and I tend to follow the same routine (particularly during the week -- the weekends are always HAVE FUN WITH AWESOME PEOPLE.):  go to work, go home, eat dinner, workout (*cough* not every day *cough*), watch some crap on TV/Netflix, go to bed, rinse, repeat.  Variations on this include, volunteer nights (Tuesdays and Fridays) and occasional dinner (or movie or hookah or olive oil tasting) with friends.  It's difficult to break from that routine without a purpose, hence The Year of 30 Days.  Voila!  Instant purpose.

Breaking from that typical work-a-day routine was surprisingly refreshing.  I enjoyed the brainstorming, talking to people about what I'm doing, going to interesting places, and more importantly, I've noticed a subtle shift in my overall perspective.  Nothing dramatic -- we're not talking an Eat, Pray, Love-esque spiritual awakening here, but I have noticed a disturbance in the force ("Luuuuke...").  But that's a longer discussion for another post.

I definitely "phoned it in" a couple of times.  There were days when life got the better of me and I simply didn't have the time to make an excursion.  I also had moments of, "I have taken pictures of all of the things.  There are no other things."  The series of eye pictures came about on such a day.  No. Other. Ideas.  As it turns out, that was my favorite post.

Speaking of, out of curiosity I took a picture the next day with makeup on this time:

My eyelashes are ridiculous, but I threw that clumpy-ass mascara away.

Lessons learned:

1.  I could have used the opportunity to practice different photography techniques -- maybe experiment with the many functions my camera has rather than, for the most part, sticking to the 'auto' setting.

2.  Plan, plan, plan.  Many days I found myself with nary a picture at 10 o'clock at night.

3.  Don't worry so much about the "creative" or the "interesting".  The idea was to take a picture, not focus on entertaining my 10s of readers.  Though, that being said, I love the shit out of this blog.  If January was a "hoot", the blog is a "hoot and a half".  I'd write it with or without readers ... but I prefer with.

Next stop, arts & crafts....