One project fails, another begins
This the fifth installment of a series reflecting on a sabbatical that ended one year ago. It will run each Wednesday through the summer.
I had a few projects I hoped would last through the entirety of my entire time out of the classroom that fell away over the sabbatical. Some of that change happened because unexpected opportunities popped up for me at various points along the way. Other projects just felt less important once I got into the rhythm of working on my novel first and everything else second. And a couple of projects morphed into something else entirely.
One such project was a series of blog posts I called Top Shots, a planned weekly roundup of some pictures I took on my phone simply to slow myself down and pay attention to the physical world in images the way I tend to in my head with words.
And for a while, I did just that, as you can see in the pictures below.
You may recognize this picture from the front page of my blog. This is facing west toward Mission Bay in the end, the sun piercing the clouds in the same moments a long bout of depression lifted for me.
San Diego’s 163 Freeway, in a rare moment of open road.
The view from Sunset Cliffs. To think, I used to drive past this view almost daily on the way home from work.
Street art meets commerce on University in Hillcrest.
But, as Frost put it, way lead on to way and I just couldn’t find the space for the space I was trying to make there.
To say this was frustrating is an understatement, even as the project was supposed to be light and really just for me. But, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I really don’t have an off-switch for feeling bad about letting projects go. Even the light ones.
Sometime in the summer, as I grudgingly started thinking about going back to the classroom, it occurred to me that I had not been back to the Top Shots well in some time and I started scrolling my Instagram feed for shots I might include in a new post. It was only at this moment that I realized what the issue was.
I was platforming these pictures on the wrong medium. Fifteen minutes later, I had created an author account on IG with the same handle as my Twitter account and have since been posting all my writing-related content there, including what I might have called Top Shots before. It’s been really helpful.
Something about posting things one at a time as they come to me—Bird by Bird-style—just makes more sense. Maybe it will for you too. Give the account a look and a follow either here or via the widget at the bottom of the page.