If you could pick one word that describes how you feel today, what would it be?

domestic | productive | regretful | frazzled | distracted | tired | peaceful | content | swamped | confused | insecure | entrepreneurial | surprised | nervous | focused | seeking | betrayed | sorry | heartbroken | enlightened | frustrated | faithful | giddy | motivated | unmotivated

Do one of these words seem to nail it for you? Okay, come up with your one word for just today. Here’s a little creative exercise for you. A challenge, if you will.

Take that word and then somehow, make that into a photograph. For those of you doing the POTD version of Project Life, this could certainly be your POTD (picture-of-the-day).

So how do you do it? How do you turn an emotion into a picture? I’ll give you a couple examples.

One of my little struggles in life right now is figuring out how to fit exercise into my routine. Sure, I’m busy. But the bigger obstacle is my sweet babe who is almost 18-months-old and doesn’t like the idea of me getting anything done or doing anything that doesn’t involve holding him, feeding him, or otherwise giving him my full attention. So exercise is a challenge for me. And I’ve become a little frustrated. And then one day last week, I feel incredibly motivated and therefore … determined.

I jumped on my bike, strapped my two littlest ones safely in the little bike trailer, and I went biking. Crew cried half the time and just seem disgruntled for no good reason. I was determined to stay with it. Keep going. Don’t stop. Reach my goal of getting this workout in my day. I even trained Claire to chant, “Go, Mommy, Go!” as I pushed our way up a big, long hill. She’s a great cheerleader.

So this could have been my POTD. It shows the bike. Shows what I did so I could write my little caption about how we went on a bike ride.

But I wasn’t merely talking about a bike ride. I was talking about my determination and how that resulted in a successful workout for that day. So I took a different picture, which seems to tell more of a story of “how I felt” that day instead of “what we did”.

Maybe today you’re feeling nervous or anxious about something that’s coming up and you find yourself constantly checking the clock. Well then, how about a picture that demonstrates those feelings a little bit.

Perhaps today you’re feeling healthy. You’re making a conscience effort to have a more balanced diet and you’re making more healthy food. Instead of a picture of say, the scale or a cookbook, how about a closer look at your real-life application of goals you’re setting.

(By the way, these fresh vegetables are all ingredients that go into one of our favorite soups. Recipe found here.)

Alright. So this is my challenge to you: Go about your day. Do your thing. And pay attention to how you feel. Obviously you will have more than just one feeling today. You should. You’re human. If there seems to be one overriding feeling, create a photograph that will help you tell that story of today.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 2:48 pm and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.