It always excites me to begin a new year.  I spent a good portion of yesterday doing my annual year-end summary, which I have done since I was a kid.  New Year’s morning I like to spend a couple of hours writing several pages about everything I had accomplished through out the course of the previous year.  It brings into focus all the amazing accomplishments I have achieved though out the year and reminds me of weakness I would still like to work toward overcoming. Last year was brutal, I began the year engaged in an application process for a job I was absolutely perfect for which would have ensured me a life of security.  But mid year, when the job finally opened I was passed over which forced me into a painful introspective look at myself.  I began to look outside of myself, which lead to year of amazing new discoveries and getting back in touch with a side of myself I had lost since undergoing treatment for cancer four years earlier.  So what started as a painful process became a year to reclaim myself.  I am an incredibly talented guy who’s weakness is my inability to promote myself.  No one knows about me as I struggling to survive and keep my head above the water.  I see it is now time to change all that.  My focus and energy this year is going to be about creating a public image of myself as an artist. Yesterday I took the first step by building a Facebook page that will feature my artistry as a photographer, but today’s focus was to create a new self-portrait.  It is time I really take a look at who I am at this stage of my life. I find self-portraits the hardest type of image to  create. It’s difficult for most of us to look at ourselves and examine who we really are with out being overly critical. The self-portrait isn’t merely a snap shot of ones likeness; it is a mirror of ones ideals, emerging style, and perspective. It needs to capture the essence of how we relate ourselves to our work. It’s far easier to photograph someone else as  a subject, because you can see their personalities emerge and draw it out of them, coach them into the best light. But most of us have a hard time seeing who we actually are and therefore want to project what it is we think we want to be or become.

I have therefore conceived of this idea to present a new image everyday of my artistry and write something about who I am,  how I have lived my life, and what  has led me to this moment.   I now commit myself to somehow create a chronicle, everyday, for an entire year;  to examine and expose myself and reveal my own journey with complete candor, honesty and truth no mater how painful.  To create an odyssey of  one man’s exploration in finding himself and his search for light, beauty, desire and art.