Semi-retirement

After lots of buggering about and stressing about missing entries and going back through to find the right photos from the right days and filling them in, I've decided that 3 years of obsessively posting on blipfoto is beginning to become more about duty than pleasure - on some days at least.

I have taken a photo (or a hundred (often more)) every single day since August 2011. Within days of starting, I became properly interested in taking photos - and not just snapshots for a journal. I learnt to look at things closely, I learnt to see the differences in every day, in every walk - even when it was in the same place. The minutiae of life, the littlest creatures, and the tiniest details and changes showed themselves to me.
In the same way writing has, photography has taught me to slow down, pay attention, notice stuff, reflect more and love life more - especially things I used to see as imperfections.

So I want to carry on taking photos regularly. What I don't need, though, is this idea that I have to post to a journal every single night.

Not anymore anyway...

My project-orientated /obsessive/stick-with-things-in-case they break mentality is useful but sometimes it's a little crippling. I'm smart enough to know that missing out a day and then carrying on doesn't matter, but I have always had a problem with carrying on with things once I feel they are broken or hole-y or the cycle has a glitch in it. It makes it less perfect and makes it feel like less of an accomplishment and less important. I often lose interest in things I have "broken" in some way.

The best thing that happened to me this year was the discovery that it is Asperger's Syndrome making me only want to carry on with things that are perfect and unbroken or going well. I've learnt (theoretically at least!) that I can live an imperfect life, I can walk along a road with holes, I can pick things up, put them down and start again.
It's not easy, I can't rewire my brain but I can make decisions based on a new outside-looking-in approach I've taught myself this year.

I've always been scared that not continuing faithfully will make me quit taking photos the same way finishing my degree made me unconsciously quit writing. There seems to be a need for some kind of routine and commitment to something for me to stick with things.

But there's another important thing I've had the chance to be more honest about this year and that's how my brain shuts down in the evening and how I can focus on less and less as I get tired. I spend all day taking everything in, being over-stimulated by the world around me and, after being awake for 12 hours or so I begin to shut down. Things overwhelm me, words and thoughts are difficult to come by, and emotions and memories are left hanging with no tools to express themselves. This shutting down makes me moody, frustrated and confused. I find myself trying to turn off or exclude anything sensory: TVs, voices, lights, movements. In order to write this now I have had to wait for everyone to leave the room and the TV to go off.

It's silly to put myself through this every night. Some nights are tougher than others.

From now on I will only post an entry when I feel like it and when I have the energy and not just because I have a day missing.

So here's my official letting things be hole-y moment
(apparently "holey" is not a word, but I'm certainly not going to have a holy blipfoto, so I'm going with hole-y)

Oh - and the photo? Once I had made the decision while I was walking today, I found myself picking up things from the beach. So they are connected. In some way...