Creative Collaboration

So, I'm starting to feel this weird sensation. Technically, it probably started right after I set out to do daily blogging, but I've only noticed it the past day or two. I'm blogging regularly, so I don't have to constantly apologize and have massive info dumps. It's weird, but it means that I can talk about other stuff and just move forward. Yeah...

I'm going to try to make tonight's entry different from the "Home" entry on the 28th, but in my mind, there's spillover.

I think everyone should have a hobby. Something that really inspires them and gets the creative juices flowing. Plus, working on a hobby can help you learn and grow outside of your work sphere. I chuckle at the imagery of a business person coming home from work and then changing into overalls and a straw hat to work on his model trains & mock town. There are a lot of people from my generation who would say that video games are one of their hobbies. I'm sure we can all think of someone (or ourselves some days) whose day consists of a dungeon raid and finger foods by the keyboard. Or there's the Call of Duty fanatics who spend hours hunting down other players to knife them in the back. Don't get me wrong, I think video games are great, but I want to have hobbies that are more creative. Okay, there are games like Minecraft where people have servers devoted to re-creating the USS Enterprise or the Sistine Chapel, but I'm thinking of something that you can look at at the end and say "I made this."

In high school, my hobbies were my extra-curriculars: music, theater, speech team, math team, etc. Fitting with the definition of a hobby, it was something I didn't need to do for school or work and something I that I really loved doing. In college, I tried out other hobbies like writing and making short films. I also tried my hand in photography. There is a large population on Flickr that does "365 Day Projects". The project is to take a daily self-portrait for a year. Most groups believe that, as long as you're in the shot and it was taken that day, it counts. So, people get really creative with it and ideas get bounced along from person to person, whether it's a theme of the day or that really cool shot that you want to pay tribute to.

Around the middle of my undergrad, there were at least a handful of my college friends and I that were doing a 365Day Project. We had all started at different times, but we were all working on the same goals. We all used Flickr, so we all kept up-to-date with everyone's progress. Since we all lived in the same building, we would also help each other out. "Can I borrow some cards and things with the number nine of them?" "Sure!" "Want to do a picture of us clinging glasses to celebrate New Year's?" "Let's go for it!" Some of us had a group on Flickr that we would also collaborate with (for example, I was part of a group of about 20 strangers who all started the project on the same day), but I feel like the friend networks were a great help.

I completed my first 365Days Project and after a while, got hungry for another one. (Taking a photo every day for a year can do that to a guy.) I got going for a bit, and then things flattened out. I tried a project here in Missouri and after about a couple of months, I had the same photo (me about to go to bed with nothing creative going on) for a few weeks straight.  I feel like I've started 4 projects and have only completed one.

So, what happened, you may ask. Well, part of it was that I would fall behind on uploading the photos daily. There would be a point where I would have two weeks' worth of photos and then it would feel like some big task. Not fun. As you've probably already guessed, I lost motivation because I didn't have that network of collaborators who were working on their own similar project. I think that's why I've had issues with blogging regularly in recent years. There was a point when I could check up on a number of friends by going through a favorites lists I unoriginally named "Blogs". Now, there are fewer friends that are blogging, so I can less compulsion to look at blogs, which led to less compulsion to pull my own blog up.

Now, obviously I've made a more deliberate effort to blog regularly. I've had one friend start blogging about his New Year's resolutions, but it hasn't been an influx of people. I think I just got to the point where I bestow personal value on blogging so that it's more important that I have it down on "paper" than showing other people. I do like getting feedback and hearing that people read my blog, but that's not why I do it.

So, yes, everyone should have a hobby. I know blogging may not be the craziest hobby, but it gets me writing every day. Who knows, if I keep this up, I may feel prepared for NaNoWriMo, which is writing a 10,000 novel during November. I'm not making my mind up just yet, but given my rambling length, it's not of the question.