When January rolled around and I had a choice to start up the Diabetes 365 project again I took a few moments to reflect on why I failed the past 2 years. Failed as in, I didn’t ever get all 365 taken and posted in either 2007/2008 or 2009…
In 2007/2008 I got further than I did in 2009…maybe because it was when the project started and there were a lot of people doing it and there was a community around it…who knows…that first year I took 278 pictures…
In 2009, I started over with the Diabetes 365 Project…I took 148 pictures…many of them got posted to my Flickr account but never made it into the D365 group…
Between the two years I took 426 pictures…
Upon reflecting on doing the project twice, this is what I discovered:
Diabetes is an invisible disease (I actually already knew that, that’s not new news)…it’s invisible because many of us don’t put it out there…I myself go back and forth between putting it out there and keeping it hidden. When I started the project in 2007, it was to find my voice. I wanted people to know what I was going through because people just don’t understand the day to day in and outs of diabetes. I knew people for years and they had no clue that I had diabetes because I never checked my blood or took shots in front of them…it was well hidden.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words but throughout this project, I discovered that only so many pictures are worth a thousand words…many other pictures have to be expounded on. I can only take so many pictures of bleeding fingers, blood glucose numbers, syringes, pump sites, general diabetes waste before the ability for a picture to tell a story and make the disease visible is lost…
Last year I started a series that was absolutely awesome, they were self portraits but it was the words that really told the story of diabetes in various aspects of my life and my behaviors towards diabetes. The pictures were just a beautiful accompanying illustration and without the words you couldn’t tell that they had anything to do with diabetes…
It made me realize that a person who sees pictures of us taking care of our diabetes isn’t going to help them understand what we’re going though. It’s what we have to say about it. My mom has seen me take care of my diabetes for 17 years now and she still doesn’t get. She doesn’t get it until I explain it; and even then, only time will tell whether or not she really truly gets it. I can tell friends or show them what my blood sugar is when we’re getting ready to eat, but to them it’s just a number until I explain it.
So, 2010 came around and I thought I’d give this a go once again, I figure one of these years I might actually get 365 pictures taken. The first month has past and I’ve taken a moment to reflect on it:
28 actually made it to the Diabetes 365 group. Those same 28 had an accompanying commentary to go with them.
6 actually scream DIABETES (to some extent)…1 more maybe kind of can look like it’s diabetes related but I think it looks more drug related…it could just be personal experience…
4 are food related.
6 are nature-y.
3 are sporty.
1 is really awesome…I mean, how many people can say that they have pictures of their pancreas? For some reason having an ultrasound picture of my pancreas has really excited me.
The rest are…I’m not sure what they are…They’re something…you have to read them to really understand what they have to do with diabetes…
I can remember at some point in the very beginning of January thinking: how do all the people that take a picture a day do it…especially the ones that have done it for several years (like my friend Drew from BenSpark.com). Within a day or so of my mental pondering Drew caught my brain wave and answered my question of how he (as a person who takes a photo a day) takes a photo a day. He never runs out of things to take photos of and he never gets bored of taking a photo a day.
After reading that, it dawned on me, my problem isn’t taking a photo a day. Taking the photo isn’t why the last two times I failed to complete 365 pictures in a year…the problem is trying to explain what that photo means in terms of diabetes when there’s not a photo to take that says “hey, this is diabetes related”. I always have my camera, I’ll pull my car over and take pictures, I’ll hunt out the perfect spot for a perfect view. I’ll see a photo opportunity and immediately think about how it relates to something in my life that is diabetes related. It’s putting those thoughts to the blog that are my problem…because diabetes is complicated and convoluted and sometimes it’s just plain hard to explain…picture or no picture…
So here we are in another month…I’m not making a commitment to another month of pictures because as described on January 1 with my New Years Revelation doing so will automatically put me in line for impending failure…but I do have a lot to write about…if I can get the words out of my brain and onto virtual paper.
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Hey Courtney,
Sometimes I do get a little uninspired with my photos, Sometimes I have to play with photoshop to make them even somewhat interesting. I don’t take nearly enough self portraits, I’m certainly not as fearless as you. You take some great self portrait shots and I need to do that much more. Maybe April will be a self-portrait month. I applaud you for doing the daily. Excellent!