Ages ago, maybe in 2012, I started a 365 project with the intention of taking and posting a new photo every day. It was a failed effort. It was the wrong time, perhaps, but I think I largely also just had the wrong attitude about the whole thing. It quickly became entangled with a sense of obligation, turning into this onerous thing hanging over my head on a daily basis.
It’s been more than a decade and I’ve decided to give it another try. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m much more hopeful about it this time around.
It’s not an obligation, even to myself. Instead, it’s an opportunity.
Having a consistent creative habit, be it writing or painting or (in my case) photography, yields all kinds of benefits. It’s good for the creative act you’re practicing, of course, but the benefits extend far beyond that. Even if you think of yourself as the least creative, least artistic person on the face of the earth, building even just the rudiments of a consistent creative practice will pay dividends.
Something else: I’m basically just doing this here, on my site. I’m tired of putting everything on social media platforms that are built to exploit users rather than serve them, which might turn into something worth quitting at any given time (already got one foot out the door with Twitter and everything Meta). There is a gallery page for the project, which you can find here. And I will post updates periodically with new images here on the blog part of the site at intervals.
The urge to do it on my own platform, though, also largely comes down to something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: returning to an earlier approach to the internet, when we were blogging and doing whatever else because we wanted to, not because we needed to generate “content” to please an algorithm that ultimately is never going to do for us what we’d like it to.
I miss the pre-SEO, pre-mass-commodification days of the internet. People blogging because they wanted to, for example, and posting when they had something to say, instead of when they had to because they had a schedule optimized for engagement.
— David R Munson//Somewhere in Japan (@somewherein.jp) January 4, 2025 at 9:25 AM
It's not like we can't still do that, though. Some people never stopped. And some of us are trying to get back to it. We needn't be reliant on other platforms (this one included) to have an audience. We can (and should) build are own, if so inclined.
— David R Munson//Somewhere in Japan (@somewherein.jp) January 4, 2025 at 9:39 AM
I’ll rant about the whole thing in more detail some time later when I have greater energy and clarity of thought at my disposal, but you probably get the idea.
For now, know that the 365 is a thing for 2025, and it’s mostly going to be here on this site.
