I've decided to end this project.
I've been toying with the idea for a long time now. In reality I've been toying with the idea since the day I started five years ago. This site started as an exercise in public self-expression. Confronting fear is a good way to bring it up, examine it, and excise it. This site began as a way for me to push through my fears and express parts of myself that pushed the "Scary" button that lives in my head. I can think back to at least a few nights in the first few years when I lay awake thinking about turning on my computer and erasing everything. Examining the motivation behind those feelings and pushing past them was an important learning tool for me.
But things have changed. Now-a-days I think I continue this site because I made a commitment to it. I've come to feel that there are better ways in which I could be utilizing the time I devote here. Ways that I am not exploring because I'm not giving myself the space. Ways that are probably not going to result in another online project like this. Ways that are not clear to me and probably won't be clear until I make the space for whatever it is.
I'm not going to stop taking pictures. I'm just going to stop putting them here. Obviously I am doing other projects so maybe I will focus more time and energy on them. I don't know. Probably not. I think what I need as a replacement to this is to do something braver. I have worked through a lot of fears but there are still some that I hold onto that I don't think I can really push against through this medium. It is time for me to go away from from this medium and make something that scares the shit out me and challenges me in new ways.
One way that I know I still have work to do is in how I tend to want to bury some of the personally revealing photos or experiences I have expressed here over the years. So as a final challenge to myself I'm going to post for 7 more days. In that time I am going to bring out that which has scared me the most and the entries that were the hardest, most challenging, and brave.
And then I will stop.
Thanks for sticking around, looking, reading, and writing.
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Behold Katsup - I'll start with this entry from December 2004 because the photo has stood the test of time as one of my favourites. As for the writing (which is awful and too stream of consciousness) I could devote a whole section to the topic of religion.