(Getting to this a couple of days late, just because I didn’t want to publish three posts in one day.)
We’re getting into a weird time of year.
On one hand, the leaves have been amazing. I think I mentioned it before, but the last few years, it felt like the trees went from green to brown to bare with no stops in between. That hasn’t been the case this year.
I thought that October was going to be busy, that there were a lot of things that would get in the way of my creative goals.
It turned out to be even busier than I expected: I’ve only had one full week without interruptions (even today they’re testing the fire alarms in my building, which is always a joy—that’s why I’m working on this blog post instead of fiction), I’ve had inconvenient (but not serious) health issues crop up, and it’s just been generally difficult to stay motivated.
But I did it.
I’ll start with Violet Lane. I wanted to reach the midpoint by the end of the month. I’m not quite there, but I’m close. It’s on the horizon. And I like the story. It’s really good (considering it’s still very much a first draft, and ‘really good’ in this context means disjointed and messy and kind of terrible in some places), and more importantly, I’m having fun with it. It’s still not easy to write, and I’ve definitely had days when it just wasn’t working, but overall, writing it is a good experience this time around.
Also, I mentioned it on Twitter, but getting back into a proper mid-writing-session coffee break has done wonders for my writing routine. The caffeine helps, obviously, but mostly it’s the process of actually grinding the beans and heating the water. It gets me away from the work for a few minutes, but in a way that focusses, rather than distracts. It’s fantastic, and I love it.
Less than one hundred days left to go in this particular project, and I’m starting to wonder what comes next.
I know that this sort of daily project does wonders for my photography. I’m proud of some of the photos I’ve taken over the last ten months, and I know that they wouldn’t have happened without the commitment I made to post something new every single day. I wouldn’t have gotten into the habit of carrying a real camera so often, and probably would gone days or weeks without taking a photo. (Just look at 2018.)
And yet.
It’s funny, how quickly autumn has snuck up on me. It’s not just the way I’ve suddenly (finally!) got to shift away from all-flowers-all-the-time—the light is changing (or disappearing entirely), my routines are changing, all of it.
I love it.
I’ve stopped worrying about all the flower photos. They’re pretty enough, and very soon I won’t have a choice; I’ll have to branch out. The flowers aren’t going to last much longer. Even the ones in this batch are starting to feel very autumnal to me.
But if I do another daily photo project next year (which is an internal debate for another time), I’m going to have to come up with a better plan, or at least find different gardens to visit.
I really hoped I’d finally gotten past the whole flower photography thing, but here we are again.
Thanks to Hurricane Dorian—and a kind of miserable week, even after I got power back—I’m a bit late with this post. But I’m slowly getting back on track.
Routine is the killer.
I kind of knew that before. I said back in June that part of my problem with photography lately is that I’m stuck in a bit of a pattern right now: I go to the same places over and over, at roughly the same time of day, travelling the same routes. I’m not seeing anything new, and that’s made it hard to see photographs I haven’t already taken.
But this week confirmed it. I finally broke out of that pattern and did something a little bit different, and started feeling inspired again. (‘Started’ being the key word, there.)
Let’s just pretend that I didn’t fall behind on this group of photos, ok? (I’m officially caught up as of this evening. I won’t say that I’ll try not to do it again, because we all know how that’ll work out.)
Let’s just focus on the butterfly. I’m absurdly proud of the butterfly photo.
I’m finally starting to break out of the all-flowers-all-the-time photography rut! And I’m a little bit in love with a couple of these photos.
Pretty good, considering I was stuck inside for a few of these days, and I relied on my phone for a few more.
