So here I am again. I’m starting another attempt to take one photo a day for a year. And to do one drawing a day for a year.

I didn’t make it particularly far last time (though it did feel like it). Hopefully I’ll do a little better this time around. I won’t be so near as picky this time: if I miss a day, week, or month (or even a year), then so be it – it’s not game over, man, game over! It’s not going to so much rules as guidelines and considering that I hope to do it over a year, I think that’s fine. Yes, there’s something romantic about the notion of performing exactly day in, day out for a year, but I don’t know if it’s any less romantic to do it more casually (it’s certainly more practical), to embrace the fun of it, rather than enforced tedium.

Anyway, to spice things up a bit, I’ll also be attempting to write one thing a day. It doesn’t matter what that one thing is – it could be a story, or it could be a journal entry, or it could be just rambling about the lack of updates re: Breaking Bad’s third season on iTunes. Anything will do, and I think that will give it flavour. Hopefully. It’s certainly an easier undertaking than my one story every two weeks idea I had last year. I don’t think even the first story was completed (though, long afterwards, I did realise how it should be written).

All three of these – the writing, the drawing, the photography – are perhaps things I should be doing anyway, but we humans are strange, strange creatures, and sometimes it takes putting things into a certain context of structure or challenge before we’ll see the value in doing them.

Would it be cheating if I decided this piece would count as my bit of writing for the day? I don’t know. Maybe. But then this is my undertaking, my rules – well, guidelines – so it’s my choice. So we’ll see.

To make things slightly more organised and official, I’ll point out – largely for myself – that the starting day for this whole, crazy endeavour, is Friday, the 9th of July, 2010. It will end on whichever weekday the 9th of July, 2011 finds itself on. I could look it up, but why spoil the (minuscule) surprise? Also, I have a feeling the 9th of July – at least in America – is the release date of a major movie. But I’m not sure which. I could be making things up or I could look it up, but, again, I’m not going to spoil the surprise.

So. Here goes. Starting…now.

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Oh, and here’s a picture I prepared earlier today:

A rough sketch of the Eleventh Doctor, that came about when I realised the head (and hair) I was drawing vaguely resembled Matt Smith.