Month #1 · January

This was the month my Analog Year started. It’s probably no accident that its beginning coincided with the New Year and also the beginning of my 54th year on this planet. I’d been feeling stuck for a while. Months. Maybe years. My birthday gift to myself  was to finally do something about it. I decided to do less.

3 Things I Learned:

1. Things you love as a teenager can love you back as a fifty something. As a teenage girl, photography was my first love. I’d never experienced a passion like that before. Everywhere I looked I saw a photograph. All I wanted to do was be in a darkroom process film or printing. But when it came time to college, I put that away, chose a practical major (computer science) and off I went. 30+ years passed before I would be in a darkroom again. And with the first smell, I felt like I was home again. Without that feeling, this analog year would never have begun. 
2. Some things are too weird to ignore. The night before my birthday, as I was turning out the light to go to sleep, I heard a voice (other than mine) so clearly in my head. It said, ‘what if you rented a studio space [to make art]?’ I heard it so clearly. It was the first time I’d ever heard that voice. Two days later, I recognized a woman who went to the same tiny little East Coast high school I went to. We overlapped by one year and I never knew her, yet somehow I recognized her. Both of those voices have been forks in the road for me.
3. Slow is better than fast. My family often make fun of me because I walk slow. My niece’s imitation of me on an evening walk is always met with raucous laughter. My family walks fast. My friends walk fast. I practically have to jog to keep up with them. But what happens when I walk slow? I look around. I see birds. I notice the light. My heart rate slows. I relax. This year I’m going to find out what happens when I live my life slow.

2 Risks I took:

1. Over donuts, asked a random woman in my weekend photo class if she, by chance, went to the same high school I did 30 years ago.
2. Signed a rental lease on an art studio with no idea what kind of art I will be making.

1 Moment I’ll Remember:

1. Sitting in room with 11 strangers, breathing in that distinctive darkroom smell, trying to load film onto reel in the pitch black.

January reminded me that changing your life rarely begins with a giant leap. Sometimes it begins by just listening to a voice in your head. Or trying something different.