A (new) meaningful year

Do you remember back in January when I told you I intended for  2010 to be a meaningful year? Well, it hasn't really been working out.

My purpose this year was to find time to get to know myself and what I want. I wanted to make time saying no to some projects so I could concentrate on the ones that are really important to me. I needed to make time to spend with those I love. I needed to stop doing too much and do more of the things that really matter. Instead, the first three months of the year have gone in a blur of wedding planning madness and crazy work hours.

I always see the beginning of Spring as a new start though, and this year, Spring also gives me a second chance to make 2010 meaningful.  I'm concentrating on writing and journaling and on taking photographs that tell a story. I'm loving Susannah's series on How to fall in love with yourself and I'm following her advice. I'm going to take this course, The Handmade Writer,  to get me back into journaling and writing. Because writing is the one thing I always come back to, what I've always wanted to do, what I've always imagined myself doing. So I think it should be a big part of my new meaningful year. 

New projects

Even though one of my New Year's Resolution was to do less, I found myself participating in two new projects at the beginning of the year. And I'm so glad I didn't say No to any of them!

Since the beginning of the year, I've been taking a photo a day for our Blog Camp 365 group on Flickr. Yes, I've found it difficult at times, yes I'm a bit behind adding them to the Flickr pool, and yes, this stressses me out sometimes. But it's all worth it because of everything that I've already learnt so far about photography and about Flickr. Seeing the photos that the others in the group take and choose to post is very inspirational, but it's the comments that are making this project so fun for me. From the beginning, we said that we all wanted constructive criticism as that's the best way to learn, and I'm loving everyone's suggestions on how to improve my photography.
You can see above some of my photos for January. Not all of them are there, as I've been playing with my new Diana + camera too and I need to develop and post those. Stay tuned!

The second project is a journaling project, Sojournal, a collaboration with three amazing ladies: Stacey. Julie and Polly. I truly love these ladies and I'm constantly amazed by their creativity. It all started with Stacey's idea that Writing is the new praying. We have each started a journal and are going to be sending them into the world soon. Initially we'll send them to each other and later, we're planning on including more people who want to be part of the project and start their own journal. The project is still evolving, we have lots of ideas to take it forward and I'm really excited about what we can do. I've posted some of my incomplete pages above (I need to add my own words) but will be posting the complete ones over at the Sojournal blog. Do come and visit!

It just shows that, sometimes, you should just say Yes... even if you struggle for time!

12 months of being 30: On writing

* This post is part of my 12 months of being 30 project, an attempt to record what happens during my year of being 30.

Stacey said it first and Julochka instantly embraced the concept of writing as the new praying. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because writing is definitely helping me feeling better despite the stress, the depressing weather, and the lack of energy that I told you about in my last post.
I know I haven't been writing here much (Sorry!) but I've been playing with words quite a lot, on my own, and as part of a Creative Writing class that I decided to take on a whim (a creative writing class in English! Talking about leaving my comfort zone!)
Last week, we did an exercise that I found incredibly liberating. We had to write three short autobiographical texts (100 words each), and chopped them up word by word. Then, we have to play with the 300 words and create a completely different text with them. The idea was putting words together without thinking too much about their meaning, but perhaps not surprisingly, most of the people in the class found that the words were definitely trying to transmit something to them. I had so much fun doing this and liked my text so much, that I used it as part of one of my 12 months of being 30 collages.

For the record, my teacher thought that I needed to add some concrete concepts as it was too abstract, but I still like it as it is.

I'm now determined to go back to a routine of writing morning pages before going to work, and sitting down and writing on a stream of consciousness whenever I feel lost or overwhelmed. I'm not sure if writing is the new praying, but for me it's definitely the best form of therapy.

PS. It's my first day at my new job today. Wish me luck!

disco underworld & me

Hello, hello! It's been a while, forgive me! I've been on a staycation: A vacation where you stay home. I've always done and loved doing this, and people used to think I was crazy to waste my holiday staying home. However, this year, because of the recession, it's the cool thing to do and it even has a name!
It's been a busy staycation mind you. For a couple of days, I pretended to be a freelance writer and photographer. I took my laptop, my Nikon and my iPhone, walked around town taking photos and then walked to a nice coffee shop and wrote, wrote wrote. I tell you, it felt really, really good.
And I wasn't only pretending, as I was writing an article for the online magazine Disco Underworld. I wrote a review of the music at Latitude, focusing on music by women. You can now read it in the 10th issue of the magazine, which is dedicated to music. I really loved doing it! The photo on the cover is also mine! And there is more from me coming in the next issue... but I can't tell you anything yet.
If you don't know the magazine and the mastermind behind it, Stacey Childs, go and visit the website and her blog now. I really admire her energy and her endless ideas, she comes up with the most creative ways to promote the magazine!
And talking of women in music, I can't stop listening to Regina Spektor, who we also saw at Latitude and features in my article. She's so cute, I think she's my new woman crush (although I still like Zooey Deschanel). Here's a video of one of my favourite songs, On the radio:

During the rest of the week, I've been doing a course at a local school called Beginning Books, it was a mix of creative writing and paper crafts that I absolutely loved. I'll tell you more about it and show you some photos in my next post. In the meantime, go and read the story and tell me what you think.