Originally published January 14th, 2018.
“You’ll get your moment.”
“A moment? Moments are short. I won’t get any time at all.”
“Time is subjective, a moment is however long you deem it to be because a moment is a segment of time.”
That exchange between my middle son and I took place a few days ago, but it got me thinking about moments. Last year, fed up with never keeping my goal to take a certain number of pictures a day and looking for an easy way to grow the content on my Instagram page I started #Project365.
I wanted to give myself a tangible goal while getting the opportunity to explore a platform I was skeptical of using from a personal and professional standpoint.
I gained so much from the experience, though. I got to tell the story of my year with just the words spoken through the images. Looking back, each one of the photos was a moment in time. Moments of joy and pain. Moments of exhaustion where I’m surprised that I managed to take a picture at all. But taking a photo a day became a habit, this little invisible task on my daily checklist that carried great weight for me. This gave me insight into how I operate and hold myself accountable. Which has been an invaluable lesson as I work to create or destroy personal habits and ways of thinking.
There were also days when I pulled shit out of my ass, a meme shouldn’t count as taking a photo, but I gave myself some wiggle room with screenshots. Which meant I learned to give myself wiggle room without also giving myself excuses. I learned how to turn the camera on myself and love it, even the "not pretty" images. I learned to see beauty in my changing body and appreciate it. I learned to see me and my life and love it for all the things it is and never will be.
I told myself, when I started this journey last year, that I would do 365 photos and then I would be good. As I sit here, 365 plus moments later I don’t want to stop. No, I want to expand. I want to dig deeper and do a bit of experimenting.
For those who have been reading my ramblings since 2009, you’ll know that I don’t write publicly as much as I use to. I’ve beat myself up about it a lot over the last two years as I’ve fought to find the strength to make the words I write scream louder than the noise in my life.
While I would love to say that I’ll do a post a week or even a post a month, I won't make that kind of commitment this year. I won't continue to beat myself up over not doing the things I once did either. My life changed, and so did my commitments, and that's ok.
I can make a commitment to give more life to our moments, though. Allowing my Instagram account to turn into a microblog of shenanigans and new beginnings.
And I promise when the moments in time require more than the 2,200 characters Instagram allows, I’ll write them here.
Until then, this is where you can find us, our shenanigans, and my personal insights: @ravradsolutions
For the newbies and those who like to reminiscence, I will be moving more of my old posts over to this website throughout 2018. So there will be plenty to read and see over the next 365 days if one is so inclined.
Until then...
or leave your questions and comments below.
But remember, the troll in the dungeon eats all the snide remarks.
Copyright(c) 2018 Rayven Holmes
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