So, I never did get around to making any new year’s resolutions. I’m still thinking about it, actually. I thought about doing monthly resolutions instead of yearly, which I may still do, but I had an idea that may be more manageable for my limited attention span and still get results.

I’m going to add a new habit to my life and do it daily for two weeks. Once those two weeks are up, I’ll add another. I won’t be as strict on the original habit once I’ve moved on to another one, but I’m hoping I’ll have seen the benefit to it and keep it up (at least most days).

For the next two weeks (starting yesterday), I decided to add two habits since I skipped the first two weeks of January. These are the habits:

1) Take my vitamins daily. I bought a bunch of vitamins to help with my health issues, but I’ve been terrible about taking them regularly. When I was taking them every day, they seemed to help with the weight loss. I’m hoping that will be the case and incentive to continue taking them.

2) Eat breakfast daily. I hardly ever eat until a few hours after I’ve woken up, sometimes just snacking instead of eating a healthy meal. This will be a challenge because I have a few early mornings this month, so I may need to bring breakfast with me when I leave the house.

I don’t have a calendar for this year, so I created a two week calendar on scrap paper and I’m checking off these two habits each day (and writing down what I ate for breakfast). I’m sure I’ll have a stack of these two week calendars if I keep this up.

What are your new year’s resolutions or non-new year’s changes for this month?

While I was cleaning out my bookshelves, I found some old paper journals of mine. I was also writing on livejournal pretty regularly from 2001 to 2008. The paper journals are from 2006 to 2008, but usually only a month of daily writing and then nothing. Anyway, I’ve been transcribing my journals so I can recycle them (I like digital – less clutter). It’s really interesting to see how idealistic I was back then, and how similar I still am. The last few years, since I graduated university, I haven’t really felt like myself. Working jobs that I hated and being physically ill for years made me feel really drained and anti-social. I wonder if journaling helped me to sort out my feelings and goals and that’s why I generally felt pretty good about myself and life. I think maybe I should start again. Maybe here, maybe on paper.

Here’s a list of goals I wrote at the end of 2006, about five months after moving to Victoria. I started the journal in January 2006 with the New Year’s Resolution of becoming more fabulous. Ended up getting distracted by a boy. And wrote these goals at the end of the year in the same journal. I’m going to evaluate how I did on these in the past five years. I pretty much still want to do most of them.

1) Simplify; consume less

I’ve been focusing on this one again. I’ve been decluttering a ton lately and I haven’t been buying much stuff, aside from things for my business, for the past few years.

2) Pamper myself (like I pamper others): cook fancy meals at home, go for walks in nature or to tourist sites -> don’t skip things just because I don’t have anyone to do them with

This one needs work. I have been cooking more, which I enjoy (but feel lazy about a lot of the time). I don’t wander much on my own, but I did go on a one month trip to Ireland by myself in 2009, which was awesome.  Also, I’ve made lots of friends now, so it’s not too hard to find someone to do things with. I just need to get out a bit more.

3) Cultivate style: own and wear only clothes I love, make more clothes, style my hair, dress up for work

This one really needs work. Most of the time, I’m working from home in my comfy clothes. I’ve been putting off buying nice clothes until I lose the weight I gained in the past two years. But I have bought a few really nice things in the past couple of months, so I’m going to try to continue that (and do some sewing again). As for the hair, I pretty much just brush it. I need to dry it more often.

4) Make a fabulous home environment

I’ve done a few things, like paint the walls and get a few pieces of great furniture, but most of it is hand-me-downs still.  Not sure when I’ll get to work on this. I think decluttering will go a long way though, and keeping this place clean.

5) Health: stress reduction, lose weight, be more active

Well, since quitting my job, I hardly ever feel stressed. This has made my tummy issues go away almost completely. Or at least I think that’s why they went away. I’m working on exercising more and just getting up from my computer at least once an hour while working. I need to focus on the weight loss seriously this year.

6) 101 Goals: focus on list and make a new one

I used to have a list of 101 goals in 1001 days.  Actually, I did it twice.  Here’s the one from the time of this list.  I got the idea from Ryan Gosling’s character on Breaker High (that was an awesome show).  Maybe I’ll make a new one now that I’ve figured out my broader life goals for the time being (have a successful photography business, lose weight and be in shape, get my money sorted).

7) Be active in my community: theatre, volunteer

This is one that I’ve done really well on. I’ve helped with costumes and bartended at a community theatre, and next year, I’m going to learn about stage lighting. I’ve also volunteered for the fringe festival, film festival (I’m being a team leader in 2012), and an animal rescue.

8 ) Become a building envelope (and architecture) expert

Changed my mind about this. I found the job both stressful and boring. I’m sure much of it had to do with the company, but I’m not looking to go back to it. I have found a job I really love though, so I’m hoping to make it work.

9) Find social balance and figure out what I want out of a relationship

I’m not entirely sure what this was about. I think it was because I had recently ended a relationship that kind of made me forget about my other goals. I haven’t had that problem since. I’m a little too fixated on my goals right now to worry about relationships.

10) Do things that scare me; become more outgoing

This has become a bit of a habit, actually. I tried out for two plays this year, even though I was terrified because it had been five years since I was in a play. I also bartend at the theatre and volunteer for other things, forcing me to be social with strangers. I’ve done quite a few things that scare me in the past five years, including driving from Ontario to BC by myself and travelling to Ireland alone. There are still a lot more things that scare me though, so I’m going to keep trying.

11) Get a handle on finances and save for a condo

I did really well at this. I paid off half of my student loans and bought a condo in 2007. Now, I have far less money and have stopped contributing to my retirement account. I need to get going on that again and keep my business spending under control.

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So, that’s the old list. I could have made almost the same list this year.  I think I’ll work on one, and post it here. It’s about time I started feeling more fabulous.

Everyone is talking about this Occupy Wall Street movement. I think it’s great that people are speaking up, but the reality of our (the general population) part in all of this is making me sad.

Corporations would not have so much power if they weren’t making so much money. They wouldn’t be making so much money if we didn’t give them our money. How many people will go to a protest and stop at McDonald’s on the way home? How many are wearing clothes made in sweatshops? I really hope these protests will bring about some change, but I think we need to make some little changes in our everyday lives.

I plan to make a significant effort to support local and small businesses. I’ve always been into buying local food and buying handmade things, but I have to admit that I still support a lot of big corporations with my dollars. I still buy fast food at times. I still meet with friends at Starbucks. I still buy groceries from the big supermarkets and don’t think about where they came from. I still order books from Amazon, because it’s just the easiest way to find things. I still buy most of my camera equipment from the big camera stores in New York City instead of checking the local stores and making special orders if they’re out of stock. I still have online shopping sprees at big stores.

I used to be a lot more careful about this stuff, but life got busy. If we want the world to change, we need to change. And that takes effort.

Things everyone can do to make the world a better place:

1. Support small businesses, locally and through online shopping.
2. Support the arts and great causes by donating to interesting projects at places like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.
3. Help small businesses in poor countries by giving a micro loan at Kiva.
4. Buy fruit and vegetables (and meat and dairy) from small farms at the farms themselves, locally-owned stores, farmers’ markets, CSAs, or locally-focused and socially-conscious delivery service Spud.
5. Cook more rather than buying pre-packaged food. Eat out at local restaurants.
6. Buy clothing and accessories (and beauty products, household items, gifts, etc.) from independent designers and creators. A great place to start is Etsy and Miss Malaprop’s blog.
7. Buy clothing and household items used from charity-run stores like the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Donate your old clothes to them or get crafty and refashion your wardrobe
8. Make the effort to find everyday things at locally-owned stores rather than mega-stores like Walmart and Best Buy.
9. Reduce your own dependence on oil by driving less. Walk, ride a bike, or take public transit.
10. Go see a concert by an indie musician you’ve never heard of. Go see a play by a small theatre company. Go to an art show. Check out local film and theatre festivals.
11. Tell your friends about the small businesses, crafters, and independent artists that you love.

Doing more of the above will help small businesses grow and create better jobs that employees actually care about. It will help self-employed people, like myself and many of the most passionate and hard-working people I know, and artists make a living doing what they love. It will let the consumer not only buy what they want (and often better quality), but also build a world that’s better for all of us.

I know these ideas aren’t really anything new, but I bet most of us haven’t put them into practice as much as we’d like to because, well, it’s not convenient. Our lives are hectic; we work too much and sleep too little. But if we can’t even change ourselves, then how can we expect the world to change?

Please add your ideas in the comments section.

Lately I’ve been finding all sorts of inspiration from random sources.  It almost feels like everything I read somehow applies to photography or my photography business.  I never felt this way when I was in engineering, but that’s probably because I didn’t really care.  Just like my coworkers would notice things wrong with every building they looked at (because of their building engineering jobs), I noticed how things would look in photographs. Now it’s happening with advice and ideas in general.

I recently auditioned for a play.  I didn’t get the part, but it was fun and I learned a passable Irish accent.  Leading up to the audition, and after a bit, I read this old book called The Audition Book by Ed Hooks.  I have the edition from 1996 (it’s amazing how many of his predictions regarding things like the internet were correct).  It’s really interesting to read about another industry, but beyond that, I’ve found some ideas that apply to my business as well.

Here’s a quotation from the book about being nervous about auditioning, which I think fits perfectly for having meetings with potential photography clients (and in some ways to the actual work itself):

“The avoidance of failure is not the same thing as the pursuit of success. When you go into an audition, step out boldly, give them something to choose. Don’t worry that you will make mistakes that will cost you the job. I mean, you already don’t have the job, right? You might as well try something because, in reality, you have nothing to lose.”

And this one that speaks to the idea of taking chances on your photo shoots (something I’ve been pursuing more this year, but still not enough):

“In the same year that Babe Ruth set the record for the most home runs hit, he also held the record for the most strike-outs.”

The above also applies to going after work and ties into the previous quotation. If you’re fully yourself and show what’s different about you to potential clients, you’re going to lose some, but you might end up winning even more.  Nobody wants to buy the generic brand when it comes to wedding photography.  At least not anyone thinking about spending a decent amount of money. The image in this post is an example of not being afraid to strike out. Any time I use my tilt-shift lens, there’s a decent chance that the image will be out of focus or the wrong part of the image will be in focus, but the dreamy quality of this photo makes it worth a shot.

To depart from the book slightly, but stay on the subject of acting, I read this interview with Brendan Gleeson today. They asked for his advice to his sons who are actors and I think it perfectly applies to photographers:

“Make your own work. Hire a room, round up 30 people, at lunchtime or whatever, and put on a play. Being at other people’s behest is the worst part of this job, so my advice would be to actually practise your craft: just do it.”

If you’re not already out there shooting constantly, get out there.  I direct this advice to myself too, as I’m drowning too much in editing and the business side of things, I’ve felt like I haven’t had the time to shoot for myself. But if I don’t make the time, then it’s just not going to happen. The best way to improve your work is to work.

All of this unlikely inspiration reinforces the idea (found recently in another acting book) that in order to be a good artist, you need to be educated, be observant, and have experienced life and culture. So, get out there and live, read, watch, and learn. Inspiration is to be found everywhere.

Well, I haven’t lost any more weight and it’s time to be honest with myself (and you, dear internet).  I’ve been exercising quite a bit and am starting to get more in shape, but still the pounds are staying.

I went through my daily food logs, which I’ve been keeping in a notebook since late May, and looked for some trends.  The biggest thing that stands out to me is all the sugar.  I’ve had something sweet (like cake, cookies, candied salmon, candy, maple syrup, etc) at least once a day almost every day since I started keeping track.  There’s maybe one or two days a week when I don’t have something that’s full of sugar.  I’ve been suspecting that my body is having trouble processing sugars properly and I’m sure eating so much of them doesn’t help.

I’ve also been ordering delivery food once every week or two when I get too tired to cook and don’t have anything handy to eat.  And along with this habit comes more sugar.  I almost never buy pop or juice or any beverages at the grocery store, but I always order pop when I order delivery.  So my food log shows that I’ve been drinking quite a bit of it.

So, for this week, I’m going to have no sugary foods or drinks until the wedding on Saturday.  I didn’t have any yesterday and haven’t so far today, though I’m craving sweets like a fiend.  I will also not order any food, and I’ll even try to go to the grocery store and get some things that are easy to eat, like pre-cut veggies and good bakery bread.  We’ll see how this experiment in restraint goes.  And maybe after the wedding, I’ll try another added-sugar-free week.  I think this is an addiction that needs to be broken.

And yes, that wedding cake was delicious.