The Importance Of A Personal Project
You should have a personal project. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you should have one. What is the one thing that brings you joy? Or that you constantly tell people you want to do, but never find the time to do it? Or that you don’t know how to do, but want to learn? Start a personal project around that (it doesn’t even need to be photography related!).
Decision fatigue on where to go on your next vacation? A personal project centered around visiting certain places or seeing certain things, like seeing every baseball stadium or finding all six wild cats in the U.S., will decide your next vacation. Want to learn how to start an online candle store? Take a candle making class and set a goal to experiment and create one new scent per month. Feeling burnt out with work or everyday life, dreaming about escaping to travel? Do two outdoor, yoga, or meditation retreats per year, in a different state or country each time. I think you can see where I’m going with this; personal projects are a great way to accomplish your goals, hone your craft, and fill your soul.
For around 10 years at this point, I’ve had two ongoing personal projects. The first one is to photograph all of the U.S. National Parks, of which I’m about halfway through. The other, and the focus of this post, I refer to as Outside October. Since October is my birthday month, has the best weather of the year, and is ablaze with fall colors, I make sure to spend every weekend of October doing something outside. This might be a simple hike, a camping or backpacking trip, visiting a brewery, or doing a cabin weekend. Whatever it is, it just has to facilitate me enjoying time in the outdoors and making memories.
This has taken me on many memorable trips, such as spending two weeks in northern Vermont, visiting the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado, camping in West Virginia, canoeing in the Adirondacks, and immeasurable hours hiking with Sally. Its enabled time spent with good friends, and also time spent with just Sally and enabling self-reflection. While my personal projects are long-running by nature, there’s something to be said for the little things like taking a winter Saturday quest to make 10 cookie recipes to find the best one. Whatever you choose, just know that I will think your personal project is awesome, and I’m happy you’re doing it.
