I'm not normally one to make resolutions for the new year. But it's hard to deny the feelings of starting a new chapter every time January 1st rolls around.
2017 wasn't a good year for me. I had the most emotionally stressful and chaotic 6 months last year that made me completely reevaluate what I was doing with my life. While it stressed me out to no end and was incredibly taxing, the one bright thing I can take from that time is that I learned some profound things about myself. I spent 6 months in an environment I felt so out of place in and was doing work I hated, but I needed to do that in order to realize what I actually wanted to do with my time.
So with that, I'm approaching 2018 with a specific theme in mind: to close the gap.
Last year I discovered this fantastic video by Daniel Sax entitled The Gap. The video uses an audio clip from Ira Glass discussing "the gap" between your skills and your ambitions. This is where "closing the gap" comes from. In 2018, I'm making a conscious effort to close the gaps and really improve in the areas I want to focus on.
When I was hating my job and feeling down about everything, I noticed I was fixated on two things: making short films and film photography. It made me realize that, of all the creative endeavours I've dabbled with over the years, these two were the ones that attracted me most. All I could think about when I was hating my 9-5 was either going out and shooting a roll of film, or visualizing a short film in my head. This is where I'm putting my focus on. While I'd love to also learn a new language, learn how to dance, etc, I'm focussing 2017 on my real passions.
I already have a solid plan for how I want to tackle filmmaking: I'm going to try and create a video every 10 days. I find one week a lot of the times isn't long enough, and also it then becomes too prescriptive (Sunday is always an upload day for example). I think 10 days is the perfect amount of time for me to execute an idea, but still have some flexibility in case life happens.
For photography, I'm taking this at a more organic level. For now, during the winter months, I want to get better at self portraits. This is mostly because I don't want to go outside, but also because I think being a little vain and self-absorbed will help my confidence. Once the weather gets warmer, I'll head outside again and try street photography.
I'm going to be documenting these efforts on my Youtube channel. So look forward to that.
Bonus goal for 2018
While filmmaking and photography are my two main focusses for the year, writing is another one. I'm going to try and stay up to date on my blog here with how things are going, book reviews, as well as posting fuller photography sets etc. But I'm not gonna beat myself up if this falls off the wayside as long as my other two goals are being fulfilled.
