Writing Myself to 30 – A very personal project #writeme30

So tomorrow (or today really by the time I publish this or you happen to be reading it) is my birthday. I’m turning 29. And I’ve been thinking lately about how very far I’ve come and all the beautiful, inspiring, frustrating and wonderful people who’ve touched my life in a variety of ways.

2014 also happens to be a really big year of personal transition for our family – Nic and I have both taken on new jobs, Mr Z is at a new school, we’ve moved from my regional heartland to the smelly city (Adelaide actually is quite a beautiful city but I’m still struggling with this transition) and in approximately six weeks we’ll have a new baby in our lives. There’s also a lot going on in our professional worlds – including my participation with the Foundation for Young Australian’s ‘Young Social Pioneers‘ Program and all the learning, dreaming and strategising this program is further inspiring.

Life is both terrifying and exciting right now and the tension between the two is making me ask myself all sorts of glorious questions about my creative practice. What it has been, what is is and what it could be. And most importantly what I want it to be.

And so.

I’m embarking on a year long project to explore and deepen my writing practice through the relationships that have shaped me – I’m writing myself towards my 30th Birthday, 18th March 2015.

Over the last week and a bit I’ve asked selected people in my world – some constants, some visitors, some past moments, some new additions – to provide me with a photograph.  I said the photographs could be anything, a streetscape, their smiling face, a rubbish bin in an alley. They might have special meaning. Or they might not.

With each of those photographs I’ll be writing a creative response. It might be a poem, a short story, a piece of personal memoir, a scene in a play or a general blog post. I’ll be publishing a photograph and it’s personal response every week starting tomorrow (18th March 2014) until I turn 30 (18th March 2015).

I expect that the way I engage with and respond to the photos will change a LOT over the year and it might start out pretty rough. But you know, I’m all about the being vulnerable thing and sharing my process as I go. So welcome to this journey with me. Wish me luck!

*If you want to follow along with this project #writeme30, subscribing to this blog (from the sidebar) will send you an email update every time I publish a new post so you don’t need to remember to keep checking back. 🙂