Friday, December 25, 2009

Photo diary

In a store in West Seattle yesterday, I found a coffee table book by a guy who had taken a photo of an ordinary event every day for a year. I've been really stressed about the future lately...well, to be completely honest, I've always been really stressed about the future. The book made me remember a day this summer, when I was in Uganda. I was sitting on the lawn in the setting sun, listening to music on my iPod, feeling guilty because I had lived in England for a year and hadn't seen any of it, and now my year of study was coming to a close. I started looking through photos on my iPod, and before long, was realizing just how much I had accomplished in the past few years. I lived in France! Then I moved to London! I visited Dublin and Edinburgh and Amsterdam and Hamburg and Switzerland and Lyon! I hung out with people I adore, who make me laugh and smile! I got a Master's degree!

Looking through this book in West Seattle, I thought of the coming year. If I were to document each day of the next year with a photograph, where would I be in those photographs? What would I be doing and with whom? And for once, not knowing the answers to those questions filled me with hope instead of dread. Why? Because of this past year, and the years before. If I had documented every single day for the past year or the past five years, I would have a physical reminder of all the wonderful places God has taken me, and all the wonderful people I've met. The continents I've visited and cities I've seen. The next year may be horrible and lonely and dismal. I may not find a job. I may have to move home and live in my parents' basement. But probably not, and even if it is, that will be an adventure itself.

So I'm going to do an experiment. Starting January 1st, if I can remember and not get too lazy, I'm going to document the next year with a photo per day. I'm going to see where the next year takes me, whether it takes me to cosmopolitan cities, or to far-off corners of the world, or to the loving arms of my family. And a year from now, I'll know if all my worst fears have come to fruition, or if, once again, my worries were unnecessary.

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Weird day

Weird day today. Not bad, just weird. Boys confuse me. Let's leave it at that.

Today being the first of December (oops, forgot it was World AIDS Day!), decorations arrived at the pub and I was recruited to help out (you know, since I'm a girl and all girls are great at decorations.) Apparently, head office instructed the general managers at all the chain pubs to have "a couple people come in an hour early to help decorate." Then they provided each pub with some of the shittiest-looking decorations in the world. A couple people and a spare hour were not nearly enough. We received two Christmas trees worthy of starring in A Charlie Brown Christmas Special, 4 sets of gharishly blue white lights, two long lengths of red ribbon (unknown purpose), several glass ornaments, some fresh-cut holly, a few thick branches off an evergreen tree, a couple wreaths to hang from our glass doors (?), and some bare willow branches spray-painted either silver or red and covered in matching glitter. All pieces which could have been elements of great Christmas decorations, if only the other elements were available and if only it was a much smaller pub. Also, no nails or staple guns were provided for affixing these random bits of trees to anything. That left a bunch of us with a bunch of messy but useless decorations. In the end, one of the managers went out and bought more supplies (including ribbon and more ornaments) which ended up making the place look way more festive than head office's supplies could.