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#everydayeveryday 2022

“Live every day with your eyes wide open and with appreciation. Optimism and beauty are powerful tools to live a life.” - Cig Harvey

At the end of 2019, I began feeling as though my life was like fistfuls of sand that were quickly sliding through my fingers. Time was moving so fast, and I wasn’t taking time to slow down and appreciate the small moments in my life. So to kick off 2020, I started a personal project to document these details. I decided to call it #everydayeveryday — a pretty straightforward title to describe my goal to take a photo of an everyday moment in my life, every day. (I used the hashtag because I was also frequently posting them on social media.)

In 2020, I never missed a day. In 2021, I missed several days, mostly due to a general sense of languishing. In 2022, I missed many days, this time for a myriad of reasons.

1. For me, 2022 was the year of a near-full emergence out of the depths of the pandemic, which left me with a busy work and social calendar. I found it challenging to take time to seek out the beauty in the mundane, which is ironic, because that’s the reason why I started the project in the first place. But it is very hard, especially if something’s not right in front of your nose!

2. I was fortunate and privileged enough to travel to Hawai’i, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Colorado this year – four extremely beautiful and photogenic states. You’re probably thinking, “Emily, why the hell are you framing that as a problem?” Let me tell you this: When you’re standing in front of something as magnificent as the Rocky Mountains, walking through a volcanic crater, or hiking along the coast of Lake Superior, it’s much easier to look at the big vistas than to focus on the small details at your feet. And then, when you eventually have to return home to a state with no ocean or mountains, you can’t help but feel uninspired for a while.

3. I also felt moments of deep despair – my external hard drive containing work projects, personal photos and videos crashed, and the vast majority of the files were unsalvageable. It was hard to put on the coat of resilience instead of staying in a period of mourning lost work and memories.

4. Jake and I got COVID in July, which put us both mostly out-of-commission for two weeks. After living in the same small, one-bedroom apartment apartment for three years, it got real hard to find new angles or objects to take photos of while quarantining.

5. I had been keeping up with posting photos on a semi-regular basis on Instagram, but then stopped one day and never caught up, which left me wondering if anyone but me even really missed or cared about the project in the first place.

But, despite all of those reasons why I struggled at times to exercise my photographic eye, I strongly believe a project like this is worth doing, year after year. Living your life with your eyes wide open is, in my opinion, the best way to experience it.

There were so many "Kodak moments" I lived through this year: moving into a house, visiting new National Parks, going on my first solo multi-day out-of-state camping trip, and my in-laws getting a golden retriever puppy, just to name a few.

The big events and milestones that happen are certainly great, but for me, it's the small, everyday moments – picking wildflowers, watching the sun come up, making violet jelly with my dad, watching planes land, finding a leaf with a smiley-face-shaped hole in it, finding cool ice patterns, feeling a warm breeze through your hair – that make for a joyful life.

With that, please enjoy my visual journal of 2022 (or at least my favorites).

JANUARY

This sunrise was a great way to kick off the year. The lake was covered with thin ice flakes, which, to my delight, reflected the color of the sky once the sun started to come up.

At certain times of the day, and if the cars in the parking lot are in the right spots, my office building is host to a plethora of interesting shadows and light refractions.

FEBRUARY

When windshields are this pretty, it hurts my heart to scrape them off.

MARCH

This is the view from my friend Haley's apartment in Colorado. Every time I visit, I park myself on the couch and stare out the window for hours.

Another sunrise view from the same window.

APRIL

MAY

This may be my favorite photo of the year, because it's got many of my favorite things in it: Jake, a great sunrise, silhouettes and a tent. We spent much of our honeymoon camping in Hawai'i – this photo was taken at Haleakala National Park.

One of my assignments for dsm magazine was to photograph different food traditions and preparations. I took these photos at Lucky Lotus, one of the best Southeast Asian restaurants in the metro.

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

This cruise throughout the Apostle Islands was gray, windy, wet and chilly. But the pops of color in the couple's raincoats and the American flag made for great photos.

I was covering an event for work, and it had been raining off and on. When the sun came back out, I knew there would be a rainbow – and there was. I sprinted out of the venue, across the street and over a levee to grab these shots – one of my favorite memories of the year!

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

From now on, when I hear someone say they hate winter, I will show them these photos.

I try to regularly post moments like this on Instagram. Follow along at @everyday_everydayproject

Credits:

Photos by Emily Kestel