525,600 Minutes

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets?
In midnights, in cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure, a year in the life?

One of my favorite songs is "Seasons of Love" from the musical, Rent.  It is a full ensemble piece where the characters wax philosophic about how best to measure the worth of a year of human life, concluding in the chorus that the best way is to measure in love.

And it was exactly one year ago today, that I took the first photos of this project.  While my initial goal for the project was to use it as a means of establishing a better work-life balance, I now understand that it wasn't just about spending time on a hobby... it was about identifying, appreciating, and chasing the love for my life.

As I mentioned in this post, this project has taken me so much farther than I ever expected.  While the actual hour-count dent I've made into the goal of 10,000 hours is underwhelming and so pathetic that it's laughable, the experiences and epiphanies I've had have more than made up lack of hours.

First and foremost, I have developed a better and stronger sense of self.  It sounds ridiculous, but prior to this project, I didn't really know what makes me deep-down, bottom of the gut, happy.  I think I was a little hesitant to even admit that, because it seems like something that should be straightforward - do what you like to do.  People told me to balance my life with work, but I didn't really know what interests, passions, etc. truly made up my life.  This project resulted in first discovering what was important to me in life, followed by a dogged pursuit of these things as opposed to just blindly following societal prescriptions of things that "should" make me happy.  Over the past year, I've witnessed many of my millennial peers also struggling with this concept, but many of them responded by completely shifting their lives 180 degrees.  Many quit their jobs to travel the world or switched careers or went back to school to begin at the beginning once more.  While those courses of action may work well for them, I knew that I would not be satisfied making a drastic change for the fear that it wasn't the right change.  Given my highly analytical nature and habits of frequent reflection, that little niggle of fear would get in the way of actually embracing the change and finding myself.  Not to mention, that would have been me throwing myself into yet another passion rather than learning to establish a balance.

Through this project, I've also validated my love for travel, adventure, friendship, and continual desire to learn.  I've explored a lot of places, traveled locally and afar, visited best friends... all with an eye to capture photographs.  As a result, I was able to satisfy my curiosity about the world.  My favorite big trip was probably the one I took out to Kentucky to explore the Bourbon Trail, because I'm not sure I would have traveled there if not to photograph the distilleries and scenery.  There was also something about this specific trip (I'm still not entirely sure exactly what clicked) that helped finally kickstart my journey for even more formal education.  While I've always thought that I would go back for a higher degree of some kind, I hadn't formalized any kind of specific timeline or action plan.  When I returned from Louisville, it all suddenly became very clear exactly what I wanted.  In the following 6 months, I took the GMAT, networked like crazy, toured several schools, and put pen to paper for personal statements and applications.  At the end of February, I celebrated and accepted admission to UCLA Anderson's Fully Employed MBA program.  Even though most people shy away from their lives being driven entirely by work and school, I'm exhilarated to not only learn more business theory, but also to be able to apply this knowledge immediately the next day - this is exactly how I love to learn.

Finally, as cheesy as it sounds, I've also found romantic love via this project.  While I didn't meet my boyfriend on a project excursion, his support of my project and desire to help me reach 10,000 hours resulted in planning and going on a lot of adventures together, during which we were able to get to know each other on a much more honest and intimate level than typical dates would allow.  You really get to see someone's true nature when you're challenging each other's comfort zones: driving along the switchbacks of sheer cliffs, getting up at the crack of dawn to catch a moment, and getting increasingly hungry, hot, and sweaty in the name of one more shot.  We have a connection and closeness that is just best expressed as true love.

So, I suppose you could say that the last 525,600 minutes of this 10,000 hour project have been filled with love... for photography, travel, exploration, good friends, learning, romance, and work.  It's ultimately been a journey of finding out precisely what I love and weaving those elements meaningfully to create a life full of love.

Since this is a 10,000 hour project on photography, I'll end with the photos I took this morning successfully summiting Mt. Lee and standing over the Hollywood sign.  After 2 hours, ~3.25 miles, and ~1700 vertical feet, we were rewarded with a view that perfectly captures my feeling about the last year of this project.

~10 minutes into the Bronson Canyon Trail, encouraged by a glimpse of Hollywood Sign up in the hills

The top of the canyon, roughly halfway to the sign.  The overcast day resulted in hazy, flat photos that had to be edited heavily in post, but it was perfect for novice hikers like us tackling a ~6.5 mile hike that also climbed 1100+ feet vertically over the course.  If it had been a clear and hot day, I'm not sure we would have reached the top.

Getting closer!

Reached a vista point and spotted the Griffith Observatory

The trail wound back and forth around and around... we spent a solid 2 hours climbing (and occasionally stopping for photos and to catch our breath) from the start of the trail.  

The sign itself is fenced off due to the fire-prone terrain... and probably to prevent vandalism.  Fortunately, the trail proceeds even higher so you can get a clear shot of the back of the sign without a chain link fence in the way.

View of Lake Hollywood and part of the H from the summit

Panorama I actually took with my iPhone.  I couldn't get the entire sign with the DSLR and  I couldn't back up further since there was only roughly 20 feet to work with before I would have fallen off the backside of the summit.

More

Active Shooting Hours: 2
Review Hours: 2
Hours to Date: 142

On the Verge of a Milestone

There is something exhilarating about being on the bubble.

As I approach the 100th hour of this project, though I am comically far from my goal of 10,000 hours (status bar: 99% incomplete), I still feel a sense of proud accomplishment and renewed zest to keep on keeping on.

Perhaps it is the fact that I took this last set on New Year's Day and that has me reflecting, but I really have come a long way from six months ago.  When I began this endeavor, if you had asked me what I expected to gain from this experience, I would have referred you to this blog's tag line:  "Looking at the world through a viewfinder, going on adventures, establishing a work-life balance, and reclaiming my personal life."  Yes, I have learned some technical aspects of photography, and yes, I have exercised my creative right brain in developing an artistic eye... but as with most of life's experiences in which you pour your mind, body, and soul, it's been so much more.

Focusing on this personal project has really been a process of self-discovery: gaining a firmer understanding of what I want out of life, what I value, and what I want to spend my time doing.  From the time I was a small child, I was always taught the importance of delaying gratification - to work hard and save to reach a goal... but nobody ever taught me how to enjoy the ride along the way.  It's an unpredictable world out there; knowing how to find happiness is just as important as working hard and saving for a rainy day.  At least in honest conversation with my closest friends, I've found that my generation doesn't always know what makes us truly happy.  We like to think we know because of what society or our parents tell us, but all too often once we actually attain whatever that is, be it material object or professional accomplishment, we end up feeling like we were sold a false bag of goods.  At the end of the day, there are 7+ billion people in this world and I have no doubt that we find happiness all a little differently - it truly comes down to identifying what drives your happiness, be it person, place, thing, or experience.

And after that rather long-winded attempt at profound rumination... actual photos:

Chance juxtaposition in the line for The Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, colors punched up in post-editing

Long Beach, through the periscope of the Scorpion attack submarine

Rivets along the hull of the RMS Queen Mary, holgaish filter applied in post

Up to the crow's nest

Active Shooting Hours: 2
Review Hours: 1
Hours to Date: 99

Amendment to the Rules

Over the last 5 days, I've managed to clock 16 hours of active shooting time at famous landmarks and locales all around the Bay Area and countless more hours uploading and reviewing over 800 shots.  Amidst all this work, I've actually come to an important epiphany that is going to be a gamechanger for this project.

To date, I've only been tracking actual shooting time.  The flaw in this methodology is that shooting pictures is only one part of becoming a good photographer - previewing images on a teeny screen in bright daylight doesn't reveal imperfections readily and it isn't until I get them onto a big screen that these errors are glaring.  The majority of my active learning time actually occurs when I'm reviewing the photos I've taken and evaluate how they could be improved for next time.

The perfect example from this weekend was trying to correct for the classic foggy haze that is San Francisco weather - though I experimented while actively taking pictures with different apertures and shutter speeds, the pictures still came out on variations of hazy with flat colors once up on a bigger screen and even digitally manipulating them didn't always yield pleasing results.  I then did what I do best - search the Internet for some answers.  I spent a solid hour reading about camera filters and how they work to manipulate light and colors in less than ideal weather conditions.  I definitely gained more in an hour of academic reading than I would have after another hour of blind experimentation adjusting camera settings.

So, all that being said, I'm changing the rules!  I'm now going to start counting hours I spend reading about photography and reviewing photos - it's a much more accurate documentation of my learning experience... and there is the added side benefit of getting to 10,000 hours much more realistically attainable.

Begin at the Beginning

This all began, as many great projects do, with late night ruminations about life.  Something about the quiet solitude of the late hours is so conducive to philosophical forays about the future and also the what-might-have beens.

As a highly passionate person, I have always thrown myself wholeheartedly into whatever my current focus may be... school, sorority, significant other, etc.  And for the last few years, that focus has been solely around my career and climbing the veritable corporate ladder.  Don't get me wrong, professionally, I gain a lot of satisfaction from, and, do genuinely enjoy my work.  Lately, however, I find myself a little too superficial and one-dimensional.  At first, after my promotion last year, I wrote off constant work as getting over the learning curve for my new role and that it would be over in 3-6 months.  But now, a whole year later, I still find myself working all the time, even on weekends and holidays.  Mostly, I used this time to catch up on emails, get ahead on other projects, etc.  And worse still, sometimes, (as pathetic as it sounds) just because I didn't have anything better to do.  During this period of self-reflection, I also happened upon Erin Callan's Op/Ed for the NYTimes, which profoundly resonated with me, and I realized that one of my greatest fears in life is to wake up on the day I retire with no other accomplishments, passions, or relationships to my name aside from professional work.

Thus, the idea to begin on my own 10,000 Hour Venture was born.

Malcolm Gladwell explores this concept in his book, Outliers. Basically, the idea is that becoming an expert in something takes an enormous amount of time - namely, 10,000 hours.  He uses examples of the Beatles, Bill Gates, and even himself as confirmation of this model.  Doing the math, even working on something for 20 hours a week (far more time than I'd probably be able to devote to my project), it would take approximately 10 years to reach 10,000 hours.

But, daunting as that sounds, I'm still fascinated by the concept and comforted by the fact that beginning on this venture provides me another area of focus and interest: photography.

I've always loved photography and find it to be the one artsy thing I can do.  I may not be able to sketch much, but I can point a camera and fiddle with some knobs and push a button.

And I think focusing on honing the craft of photography is something that will force me to go on adventures - seek out new and exciting subjects, travel, explore, and meet new people - all things I love to do, but for various reasons, have eluded me to date.

And so, having just purchased a new DSLR camera and starting with this post, it's off to see the wizard, tallyho, and full speed ahead!!