{"id":3424,"date":"2016-01-23T07:23:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T12:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/?p=3424"},"modified":"2016-01-23T07:54:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T12:54:34","slug":"a-single-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/2016\/01\/23\/a-single-step\/","title":{"rendered":"A Single Step"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Light <\/a>
Light on the shades <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Our <\/a>
Our tree <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Yep, <\/a>
Yep, it’s cold out there <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Who's <\/a>
Who’s at the front door? <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"After <\/a>
After school <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"It's <\/a>
It’s still Christmas <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Cowboy <\/a>
Cowboy Danny <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\nIt is late in the Christmas season when we finally put up our tree; late to most people but really only the third week of Advent\u200a\u2014\u200aGaudete Sunday. On January 1, while the majority of trees are being returned to boxes in the basement or hauled to the curb, ours lingers a quiet twinkly beacon of Christmas. With a wild pack of boys still running underfoot most days, I am reluctant to decorate with glass ornaments so our tree is graced with plastic ones, candy canes and construction paper. There is a beauty in its meagerness\u200a\u2014\u200aa spare witness to Christmas joy.<\/p>\n

Spare simplicity is my hope. One day, when all the children have grown up and moved away, when my husband and I are alone, I will be able to clear out the piles of accumulated stuff from the corners of my home: clothes, books, broken toys, papers, plastic sippy cups, half-completed projects abandoned, nerf darts.<\/p>\n

Last time I finished a 365 photo project, I swore it would be the last. Instead of spending so much energy searching for the day\u2019s photo, I would take that time to develop a more complex body of work. I began the studies in abstracts, multiple exposure and blur. Removing the discipline of the daily photo exercise, however, didn\u2019t lead to more time for complex projects, it led to no projects. Without the urgency of a daily goal to be checked off, things tended to slide to \u201ctomorrow.\u201d Tomorrow had it\u2019s own set of problems that took all of tomorrow\u2019s time. Photographing anything quickly degraded to photographing nothing.<\/p>\n

So here I am, doing another 365. This time I\u2019m pairing it with writing however to try and improve my skills. 365 photos (or actually since it\u2019s a leap year, 366) and an essay every week\u200a\u2014\u200a52 themes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just such an American thing to do, though, isn\u2019t it? The articles start trickling in around the beginning of December\u200a\u2014\u200a\u201c5 Things Every Super-Productive and Crazy-Creative Does While You are Still Sleeping You Pathetic Slob!\u201d Outrageous click-bait titles scream at you from every social media outlet, TV and grocery check-out lane. By New Year\u2019s Day the roar is absolutely deafening.<\/p>\n

Escaping from \u201cefficiency\u201d and \u201cproductivity\u201d and \u201cone word for the year\u201d sent me back to \u201cwhat\u2019s your creative project for the year?\u201d Thoughts like that always make me a little sad. I don\u2019t own my time\u200a\u2014\u200athere are many demands on it from people who have a legitimate right to demand it: children, spouse, students. So the goal is really to use what I have not with an eye to cold efficiency or maximum productivity but with joy and love. Without love, it\u2019s all noise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is late in the Christmas season when we finally put up our tree; late to most people but really only the third week of Advent\u200a\u2014\u200aGaudete Sunday. On January 1, while the majority of trees are being returned to boxes in the basement or hauled to the curb, ours lingers a quiet twinkly beacon of Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-55"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/20160101-christmas2015-57.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2v9Qt-Te","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3424"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3465,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions\/3465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sienafallsmedia.com\/gems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}