I’ve spent the weekend salvaging what I can from a dying hard drive.  The files in the most danger (on the partition that constantly disconnects, and then reconnects with intimidating messages like THIS VOLUME CANNOT BE REPAIRED.  TRANSFER FILES TO ANOTHER VOLUME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE) are mostly from my senior year of college.

It’s fun to look back at those pictures and art projects.  Some are things I’d completely forgotten about; others are files I’ve been meaning to pull open again for years.

I’m happiest to revisit the self-portraits.  This is an era where I took a self-portrait every day, for over a year.  The project quickly became a visual journal, documenting the ups and downs of a stressful and wonderful (and stressful; it’s worth mentioning twice) year.

Mustering the creativity and courage for a portrait every day was a challenge.  The good days were great!  But every artist (every person, I suspect) has times when they feel they have nothing to give.  Feeling that way and being under the commitment to make art anyway–and not just art, but a self–portrait–is exhausting.

“Someday you’ll go back through these photos and appreciate them,” I told myself on bad days.  “You’ll be glad you stuck with this.”

I was right.