Day 23 -- Looking for a Sign

So for the past couple of weeks it's felt like my life has been getting harder and harder. I mean, knock wood, I know the world can always throw even more and worse shit my way, but during the past ten days there has been an unrelenting series of unfortunate events that has begun just totally eroding my good humor, not to mention my will to get out of bed each day. I feel as though I'm laboring under a bit of a curse these days, that I have somehow inadvertently angered a primitive and extremely vengeful god who is just unleashing all kinds of whoopass upon my feckless head.

Enough complaining. The point being I've been feeling a bit distracted from my 365 project for the past few days, anxious eyes trained more specifically on "house for rent" signs than potential images. (Yes, I need to move. Fairly suddenly and unexpectedly. Sigh). I named this blog "Signs and Wonders" in part because I recognize this year of visual exploration is going to be paralleling a year of intensive life changes. But tonight the two converged, my search for photographic and existential meaning dovetailing with my search for new quarters: I was waiting for a tardy prospective landlord and took myself on a tour of the grounds. It was a really old farm house with multiple buildings in various stages of falling down, and one of them had only this one skeletal wall.

Just as I spotted it the landlord arrived and began hollering down the hill for me, and I nearly began to walk away -- but instead turned back and clicked off three quick frames. Only later did I get to see what had turned up, and I love love love this image. I plan to go back with actual toy cameras and shoot it on film, it's so haunting and stuck in my brain. But even this digital shot from my cel phone makes me really happy -- of all the Hipstamatic shots I've done, this one has the truest toycam vibe.

It just feels so good that, in the midst of feeling such anxiety and stress and despair, I can make a picture that I like so much. Not to exaggerate, but this 365 project is saving my life a little bit these days.