Social Life of Information

In December, I joined a photo-a-day Flickr group, Project 365!, as the daily photo meme captured my fancy. At the time, I knew that it would prove challenging to continue to come up with something passable every day, much less something good. But I’m persistent and not inclined to back out on my commitments (however meaningless in full context) so even though it’s a hassle at times, the daily photo odyssey is a good exercise for me. Today is the 108th day of my year of daily photos, and a sufficiently opportune moment to contemplate the experience to date.

So aside from the aforementioned challenge of continuous production of something acceptable to post, I must note the timing. I could have predicted that this would be an eventful year to document my life in this way, but I don’t think I could have predicted just how eventful it’s been already. In addition to everything momentous that’s happened in the last 108 days, I can think of so much more that is coming in the next 257, that it seems the timing of this project is just about perfect. I already have planned the photo for our 5th wedding anniversary next month, and other upcoming photos-of-the-day will include Las Vegas, graduation, San Jose, a new nephew, a new house, moving to upstate New York, starting school in Syracuse, and who knows what else!

At the end of this year in pictures, I’m thinking of creating an album of the 365 images I collect for Project 365! I feel like I’ve invested too much in the project not to somehow reify the content and process in a physical artifact like an album or book. I’m not sure that I’ll continue with daily images after I finish this year; if this has demonstrated nothing else for me, it’s that my life is a fairly mundane punctuated equilibrium. Even in an eventful year, most days are pretty much the same, and that’s a part of what makes this photo project an interesting challenge.