{"id":1292,"date":"2011-01-05T06:58:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T12:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2011-01-05T06:58:42","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T12:58:42","slug":"hattiesburg-american-column-152010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=1292","title":{"rendered":"Hattiesburg American Column 1\/5\/2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

My column that appears in the Hattiesburg American<\/a> today.<\/p>\n

I HAVE A GOAL FOR 2011<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to take one photograph (at least one) every day for the entire 365 days of the year.<\/p>\n

I’m reluctant to call this a resolution. I don’t want to feel like I’ve broken a promise if I don’t follow through.<\/p>\n

I might miss some days. I might quit altogether.<\/p>\n

And that won’t be so terrible. I’m doing this for me. I’ll only really fail if I don’t try.<\/p>\n

I want to do this because I want to be a better photographer. I believe the daily practice will inspire me to accomplish that. I’ll probably experiment more with my camera, read more books about photography, and attempt shots I might not have otherwise tried in my efforts not to repeat myself too often.<\/p>\n

As a bonus, I will have a visual record of my year when I am done.<\/p>\n

I’m a big believer in daily practice. Whether you want to be a musician, a writer, an athlete or a chef, the only real way to develop and maintain skills is to work on them every day.<\/p>\n

I’m not trying to become a professional photographer, though. This is my hobby. This is my personal outlet that gives me some relief from my work.<\/p>\n

I don’t aspire to become better than “real” photographers. I just want to be the best I can be. That too is best achieved through daily attention to the craft.<\/p>\n

365 projects appear to be popular New Year’s resolutions this year. “Take a picture every day” is currently #9 on the list of most popular resolutions at www.43things.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Lose weight,” much to no one’s surprise, is #1.<\/p>\n

Normally, I try to avoid resolutions. I don’t like setting myself up to fail. This year is different, though. I have something I really want to try.<\/p>\n

If you, too, hate to let yourself down, don’t be so hard on yourself. Just pick something you want to accomplish and go for it.<\/p>\n

I might not make it to day 3 of my 365 project without breaking my streak.<\/p>\n

If I don’t, I’ll still have 2 more pictures than I had before. And if I pick back up again on day 4, I’ll have one more.<\/p>\n

That’s more than I could say if I didn’t try at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My column that appears in the Hattiesburg American today. I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hattiesburg-american-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}