first.

It was very fitting that on the first day of the new year I photographed a newborn baby. Beginnings. Potential. Adventure. Love. All wrapped up in one tiny, sweet little body. Brand new to the world.

In my photography community, it's really popular at the beginning of the year to start a "365" where you post one photograph a day for a year so you have a collection of memories from the year. We are always really gung ho at the beginning and then as life settles in again after the New Year's excitement, well the project kind of gets left in the dust. I want to try reaaaaaaallllllllly hard to do this, but I'm being realistic knowing that I might not grab my big camera each day to grab something important that happened that day. But I can mix it up and do more than just pictures. So this is my 365. Recording memories, whether in words or pictures...but it's going to be great.

For Christmas my parents got me a book called "The Happiness Project". It's perfect for me. Especially in my quest to really live life. It's a challenge to write one sentence each day for five years and then bam...you have treasured memories from five years in one little book. Any kind of sentence. What you ate for dinner that was fantastic. That moment you looked in the mirror and for once in a blue moon said "Dayum, I look good." Or that time you snuggled up on the couch with a cup of coffee and watched a foreign flick. Embracing the little things of each day.

Today's sentence:

Today I spent time with lifelong friends and I was really proud of all of us and who we are becoming.


My other book I have is called "One Good Deed a Day". You flip through, pick something to do, and well, you do it. There's 365 deeds so you get a good year full of doing good deeds. Today's random good deed was simple.

Listen.

Coinciding with what I wrote in my Happiness Project Journal, I got the chance to listen to a friend tonight. My dear friend Becky is in town for the holidays on break from her grand adventure around the world. She's currently in a global Master's program with a local university and though I'm already incredibly proud of her for being so adventurous (and slightly jealous) I was even more proud after listening to her talk tonight. Becks and I are kindred spirits in that we have a heart for little third world countries that seem insignificant to most people. She loves Burkina so much. She lights up when she talks about that country. So tonight she shared with us all of these wonderful business strategies she's learning and she spoke about how she wants to implement them somehow with the orphanage in Burkina. It was really inspiring to hear her passion about reaching out to these people and helping them become self-sufficient by taking skills that they have and utilizing them in a business manner to support themselves and their families. You can see how evident it is that her heart, even though she might not ever make that commitment to living there, her heart is committed to these people. And that is a beautiful thing.

I love seeing my friends inspired and I love being inspired by my friends.

It was a good first day.

*If you would like to know more about the Orphanage in Burkina and how you could help, go check out the website, Sheltering Wings. I spent some time there when I was 19 and would love to go back someday, but until then, I love spreading word of what they're doing over there.