Half-Assed is Still a Big Deal

So there's this fun, cool, intense, creative online photo project known as Project 365, where you take a picture every day of the year and upload to a place like Flickr and share your photowares in an online community. I have been intrigued by this project for a couple of years and made myself promise I would do this in 2009. Then 2009 came in with the usual uneventful fanfare of another year and I realized on January 12 that I missed the start. As friends and family can attest, I am a stickler for rules and process and formality and all that crap, so I let the notion pass. Plus, while cool, there's a big commitment to it and one for which I have obviously vacillated. But then I had an idea. An idea that would work in my rules-based head.

I could do this project for half the year.

It would be half the commitment and perhaps half-assed in the minds of the die-hard, repeat offender Project 365-ers. But more my style considering I have competed in in two half marathons which I enjoyed and one full which I abhorred. So, half-time, half-assed seemed wholly perfect.

I googled "What day is the exact middle day of the year?" And the answer was July 2, in a non-leap year. And then the challenge started to sink in and I started thinking.

Thinking about how busy life feels. How I am not sure I can manage all that I have chosen, or what has chosen me. And yet, this daily commitment to picture taking, selecting a single image to represent the day and subsequent blogging seems like an opportunity to slow down, an opportunity to capture the every day moments that when not paying attention can feel mundane or routine and are, in actuality, the sum total of this life.

That realization resonated with me in a way that was equal parts calming and disquieting. Contemplation continued. I posted the idea on my Facebook wall and got a lot of positive feedback (including a willing partner in Deejah), and I found myself making a commitment to both my friend and myself.

I am not entirely sure I need any more challenges right now, however, I do know that I need to create something. I have the urge to capture perspective and catalog the journey I am on. And for those reasons it feels like a good thing to do.

Here I go...