random thoughts: create light

Every year I choose a word to help guide me for the coming 12 months -- and this year, I chose the word CREATE. I've mentioned before that I'm a project person, and I decided that I rather than waiting to come up with one over-arching project, I would challenge myself to simply create as much as possible, and see what comes up. It's only 3 weeks in, and so far, it feels like a sound strategy.

However.

My friend Ali Edwards, the person who first introduced me to the concept of coming up with a single word, once told me that some years, she doesn't choose the word, the word chooses her. And while I'm not sure I really understood what she meant when she said this to me, this year, there's a word that seems to keep showing up in my life recently, through conversations that I'm having, books I'm reading, even stories that appear on my screen through Facebook and Twitter.

The word? LIGHT.

It's sort of uncanny how often I keep running into this word. So this year, I figure that maybe perhaps I'm meant to have two words:

CREATE LIGHT.

As a photographer, this feels like pretty good guidance. But then again, as a human, it's probably not a bad phrase to keep in mind, as well.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."