Immortalizing the Days: January

2020 was such a whirlwind of a year… so much loss and growth, the change nearly incomprehensible in a year that felt stagnant and stuck in a limbo of, “When we go back to normal…” and “What is normal anyway?”

New Year’s Eve 2020, I found myself scrolling through social media, looking at everyone’s video compilations from the year, or declarations of how 2020 was somehow still their year. I found myself wishing I had some kind of visual diary that I could share with the world. I wanted a way to immortalize the days and remind myself that while each day seemingly blurred together with only a microscopic amount sticking out… I more than likely accomplished something, be it big or small, each day and that’s worth noting.

For 2021, I’ve decided to do two things in order to immortalize my days, so when the year comes to an end I have a physical reminder that not only did I do everyday, but everyday I felt, created, explored, cleansed, and consumed.

The first thing I’ve done is downloaded this app called 1 Second Everyday where I upload a little snippet of 1-1.5 seconds. It gave me a little thing to look forward to each day and was the little push on certain days to just do. Then it became fun evidence on the days where it seemed I didn’t do anything… that I did actually do something.

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The next fun adventure in my immortalization trek, is something I came across somewhere on IG (I can’t trace back the origin unfortunately) but it was to create a Spotify playlist and add one song everyday. You already know how ya homegirl feels about playlists, so obvi I was so down for this I couldn’t make a playlist fast enough. Each song that I add everyday is either one that had been an earworm that day, or a new song that struck a chord with me, or a day that was so radical it was easy to find a song that perfectly embodied the day.

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Feelings after experiencing my video and playlist on 1/31/21:

Playlist? LOVE. But I’ll be honest, when watching my January video, I felt a bit dejected. It felt so… boring and kind of sad to watch back through at the very end of the month. I didn’t travel anywhere, I didn’t really socialize much, why the heck did I want to immortalize the days again?! But as I re-watched several more times I picked up on the little things, the little accomplishments, the mini self adventures.

Five things learned in January:

• Baby steps forward are better than no steps at all.
• Avocados and bananas take ages to get ripe, but just seconds to go bad.
• Invest in organization.
• The saying, “Never dull your light to make someone else feel comfortable,” isn’t just for loud girls with big personalities – it’s also for women labeled bossy, introverted, stand-offish, etc… It means be who you are and when someone tells you to smile more or be less bossy, you literally don’t have to do that. Your bossiness, your steadfast nature, is you and that’s fine, great even. Block out the haters and be you, be comfortable.
• Voicing an idea that gets rejected is better in the long run than withholding an idea in fear of rejection. It sucks when someone else thinks of that very same idea later down the road and poof, you lost an opportunity to shine.

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