2019 snipbits

JANUARY

i could see my breath under the covers and woke up to a parking ticket most mornings. readjustment, rejection and missing asia. hoarded three hundred plastic straws in my trunk in effort to be more wasteful. rainbows every afternoon in the living room. took losing a memory card as God making fun of my pain. started slamming my car door more often. admitted i hated being in america for the first time over chilli and fritos. interviewed for editor in chief at the school newspaper. found the memory card after a thunderstorm.

FEBRUARY

tried to take life a little less seriously. got invited into a life group, started eating more pancakes. listened to a lot of amy winehouse. consecrated my team at the paper, or tried to—hard phone conversations with friends under a pink blanket on the porch. asked for almond milk in my coffee at foxy during my 8am break, kinda tasted like peanut butter. things a little unsettled, i wanted to feel at home, still a little out of place. began praying for people at church. podcasts.

MARCH

showed up for a meeting with my photo professor in sweatpants and a puffy coat. creases and spot toning errors on my final prints. felt totally incapable, called myself a failure. more pancakes. watched my team publish incredible content on the website. drove to mississippi and remembered how much i loved god. abandoned my religion just to spend a moment with him, laid a red carnation at the altar. shot on film for fun. peed on the sidewalk at a school i didn’t go to. vowed to start over. got bangs.

APRIL

decided to start cherishing what i was documenting. tried ketchup and sugar on my spaghetti and hated it. smelled a lot fish sauce, talked about jesus using broken english. spent a lot of time with my photographs from asia, preferring 3am’s insanely sloppy color mixing and finger painting. started using a chemex and eating more oatmeal, stopped asking for almond milk in my coffee. took a lot of naps after class, studied for quizzes moments before. a lot of transition, thought about writing a book. indesign tutorials.

MAY

got pissed at facebook. got pissed at guns. slammed my car doors again. drums at church returned to triggers. threw cards in the trash. burned my tongue on chemex coffee. joined writing club and read a poem to a group of kinda strangers plus a friend. cried in the office. went to the library and got accepted into a sketchbook show. finished my fibers final. asked god to go overseas again and got invited to north africa. found out cold brew makes me shaky and tastes like chocolate. went to the park, ran for fun and ate more watermelon. watched a lot of movies i “should have seen by now” according to my roommate.

JUNE

went to the beach and dug a hole in a sand bar. drove to alabama, new orleans, texas, texas, texas and colorado. thought chasing an amarillo sunset would be a good idea and thousands of mosquitos proved us wrong. spray painted sticky cars. put too much effort into cleaning air bnb’s. went to santa fe. shot on film for fun again and bought my first piece of art. reunited with my instructors at corepower. got better at crow and handling humidity. stood front row at local natives. couldn’t figure out where to live, ran out of shampoo, borrowed a black t-shirt and shot my first wedding.

JULY

woke up at ungodly hours for good lighting. gave brother moses and jon bellion a chance. lost memory cards and batteries in a park and slammed my car doors. sweat through my clothes waiting for the hippo and head and the heart concert. shot my second wedding. fell in love with idaho springs sunrise trips and asleep on my friend’s shoulder. couch surfed between family members. used a handful of different netflix accounts. befriended new dogs and added plant care to my daily routine. made it to the mountains often, still went back to savannah early.

AUGUST

spent time with god at the park every day. got back into collaging. ate a lot of salmon, watched more movies i “should have seen by now.” made daily trips to waffle house. talked to a few strangers about politics and the bible. squeezed kat’s hand on an airplane. got jipped by men selling magnets. rode a bus, a “bus,” a car and a camel. pretended like i knew spanish. accidentally watched a fountain show. got locked out of a hotel in a swimsuit. communicated in spongebob quotes. won a bet at foxy. introduced my dad to mexican street corn, showed my family the best restaurants in savannah.

SEPTEMBER

got new neighbors. evacuated to atlanta. advocated for ethical and creative journalism on campus. tried to learn all the new staffers’ names and avoid embarrassing myself at meetings. received a pavlova cake, a salmon container and sports bras for my birthday. hit a pinanta in my “front yard.” watched two boys give birth in a giving birth accent. saw the sunset from alexander. photographed my friends in their rooms and thought i broke the shutter on the school’s camera. dropped the lens multiple times. figured out where drayton towers was. began forming community at compassion and hating online math.

OCTOBER

slaved over relief prints of tunisia then sold them at open studio night. broke down over hand bags, concealer and frizzy bangs. cried about january. embarked on a week long sprint and spent fourteen hours a day managing the staff and website. tried and failed to keep up with printmaking. got some more parking tickets. ordered a lot of different sandwiches at panera. dropped my lens again, laughed a little more in the darkroom. started getting along with an old professor. made a really short playlist on spotify.

NOVEMBER

grew more confident in my photography. overthought myself into turning in an unfinished printmaking final. printed out and sold square photographs from overseas for the first time. built a fort. made spring rolls. rode a bike. went to a new yoga studio. tried refried black beans. watched a friend start her own business. read four chapters of uninvited. learned about contentment. found out disney world was actually a global experience, went to “morocco.” declared florida the worst state to drive through in the country. enjoyed resting, especially on saturdays and in starlandia. celebrated thanksgiving in savannah and built a sandman.

DECEMBER

reminded myself i have enough, am enough. rediscovered dr. dog. tried to figure out a plan, came up blind-folded. escaped to mountain towns, made a lot of images. started taking phone calls from the car. felt pretty free on the 13th then pretty discouraged on the 21st. unwrapped 400 feet of seran wrap with oven mitts. received a photograph of my great grand mother on a camel in africa. dropped lithography for fibers (sorry julia). spent 28 days on my bible app. did my first headstand at corepower. handed god my playbook and vowed to trust him a little more, slam my car doors a little less. opted for the blindfold.