Driving the donkey

Let me tell you about a friend and former colleague of mine; we'll call him Tom. Tom is a 'big picture' person, an idea-generator, and someone who is so excited about possibilities that he often fails to see the finer details that will make them work. A few years ago, he bought a 3-bedroom house in need of renovation, quickly converted it into a 4-bedroom home (being a builder in a former life was very helpful here), then decided six months later that he wanted to move some of the kitchen cabinets 30cm across because the family needed a bit more room around the dishwasher. Oh, and he would eventually add glass to the doors of the display cabinet, and skirting boards under each of the cupboards, but in the meantime there were so many other possible projects around the house that he could move on to before then. I have the utmost admiration for his incredibly patient and understanding wife.

Tom is fond of using idioms, but his penchant for ideas over accuracy means that they often come out of his mouth in a slightly different form. For example:

"How are you doing today, Tom?"
"Oh, I'm a box of budgies!" (when he was probably, in fact, looking for fluffy ducks).

During a staff meeting, where we were being informed about a requirement to follow some new bureaucratic process, the details of which I forget, in order to do something we'd always done anyway (or possibly even had done better before), Tom became increasingly jittery. He could see what we saw: this "new" process was simply going to add to our workload and not actually achieve what we needed or wanted. However, in order to demonstrate compliance, we could blindly follow it and then eventually get down to the business we'd set out to do. Tom couldn't see the point. Many others agreed, but Tom put it in a way no-one else could: "That's just the tail driving the donkey!", he announced in frustration. Ok, so he was supposed to say "tail wagging the dog", but there was no mistaking what he meant.

From then on, donkeys became a bit of a theme in our team and the butt of many jokes. However, the message was always clear: whatever we did, we wanted it to be for the right reasons and not simply because the tail was driving the donkey. This is not easy in most workplaces.

Another colleague views blogging in very much the same way. She maintains that "a blog should be a tool or a vehicle for expression - you drive it and not the other way around". I agree; I maintain this blog because I enjoy writing and blogging and not because I feel compelled to post a certain number of times each week. However, I realised this morning that the situation is not the same for my Project 365 blog; I feel it is that tail that is indeed driving this donkey.

I was a little hesitant to start Project 365, which involves taking a photo each and every day and posting it to a blog. I was drawn to the idea of visually representing a year of my life, but not necessarily to the photography aspect. The photos I have taken have either been significant or interesting to me, but were never intended to be technically good examples of photography; they are personal, rather than taken for an audience. At times, the pressure of finding a subject to photograph every day has got me down and, as I don't tend to upload photos daily, I've been uploading 'back posts' of photos every few days. I suppose it doesn't really matter when I post, but having a photo-less week last week has now put me a week 'behind' with this project.

I've decided to stop letting the tail drive the donkey. I will still endeavour to take a photo a day, but if I don't make it on a particular day (or days), I'm not going to let it worry me. I will continue to post photos in numerical order and see where I end up on 1 June 2010, one year after beginning the project. Strange though it may seem, some days I simply have nothing much to say. Surely I don't need a picture to prove that?

Project 365 has begun

I have now officially started Project 365. For the next year, I will endeavour to take one photograph a day and post it online.

I've got to say that the stormy weather we had today (again) almost put me off; there wasn't much that was exciting enough to capture within the four walls we've been confined to for most of the past week or so. However, I was proud of myself as I trudged down the street to the beach, where I'd seen some windsurfers struggling against the choppy sea a few minutes earlier. I felt like a professional photographer in the line of duty as the sand whipped up against my face and I raced out, battling the elements, to capture my subject while the light was still good ...

By the time I got Petone beach, the conditions were worse than before, the sky had already started to darken, but there was a lone windsurfer still braving out the tide. I could just make out Wellington city in the background, and even he was hard to track for this photo. I thought the sky looked incredible, though, so snapped away.

You can follow my Project 365 here - Cafe Chick's Project 365.

Project 365: To be, or not to be?

I am contemplating starting Project 365, taking a photo a day of something which I have learned, something I found interesting, or something which simply sums up my day in some way. I have set up a new blog, Café Chick's Project 365, and will continue to develop the site during the next week or so. I like the idea of looking back at a collection of images as a kind of visual library after one year; I just wonder about my level of commitment to get there. However, looking back to the time when I contemplated starting 101 goals in 1001 days, I see my mind was going through the same sorts of questions, and I definitely went ahead with that project.

I won't elaborate on Project 365 here, but instead point you to my blog post about it on my new blog. I'm about 80% convinced that I will start the project on 1 June. That leaves me 9 more days to either talk myself into or out of it!

So, who wants to come along for the ride?