A Day in My Life

When Jennifer Schwartz asked me to think of a creative idea for a blog post for The Ten I thought of James' "A Day in the Life" video--I figured he could do a similar stop-motion montage of one of my typical days, but after discussing it it became obvious that the amount of time it would take to shoot--let alone the amount of time it would take my poor husband to edit the piece--would be astronomical. As a result I decided that it might be a sign that I needed to take it upon myself to do something along the same lines but to make it fully, intimately my own. 

I hit on the idea of taking pictures every two hours throughout my day with commentary about what I was thinking at each given moment, and I must admit it felt pretty amazing to have a reason to step outside of my usual box as observer and instead to create work with myself at the forefront. 

I have an internal dialog that runs in my head almost constantly it seems; shooting these images and writing the accompanying text felt like a way to examine that dialog, to make it concrete, maybe as a first step towards processing all of the good, bad and otherwise that I confront every day.

Below are three images/text which will hopefully whet your appetite for more--there are 8 photographs total on The Ten blog which you can see here.

7 a.m. I've just rolled out of bed and am about to wake up my 7 year old daughter Edie; I usually go into her room first because she's harder to get going than my 5 year old June. In this photo I'm feeling exhausted because I stayed up too late reading and then Edie got up in the middle of the night, and I'm already worrying about everything I have to get done that day.

9 a.m. Here I'm looking at my blog roll, and have been on the computer since I got home at 8:05 from dropping the girls off at school. I keep thinking I should get moving on my day but I have a bad habit of hopping online the second I walk in the door. I tend to use the computer as a way to numb out due to anxiety, and I beat myself up over how much I procrastinate and waste time.

11 a.m. Our dishwasher is coated in a layer of mashed up paper because I washed a jar with a label on it the night before so I'm scrubbing it out, which isn't altogether unpleasant because it makes me feel productive. I'm unaware that I've forgotten about that green feather in my back pocket which June had handed to me on the walk to school. It ended up going through the laundry.