Another year, another video where I recorded one second for every day of my life.
As with previous years, it has been a challenge not just to maintain the project, but to maintain it in a way that performs good storytelling. Anyone can record a second of video everyday – not everyone can use these seconds to create a narrative, an intense feeling, or a memorable moment. Over time as this project has gone on, I have continued to optimize my life around experiencing these moments, rather than recording them. This has led the videos to suffer overall.
But despite all the challenges, I must say that going through all my seconds at the end of the year was still an intensely rewarding experience. So many moments I would have forgotten resurface during this process. I recall people who were incredibly important to my life, and others who I was grateful to have just tangentially connected with.
A few big themes emerge for me:
1) This was the year of the cello – I have no idea where my cello proclivities are going to lead me, but for now, it’s incredibly valuable to me that I have this video document showing exactly how hard I worked at this thing this year. Every single second of cello represents a day that I practiced, and I am proud to have worked so hard at it.
2) Meeting my heroes – I’d almost forgotten that I’d had the opportunity to meet and talk to some awesome people this year, including directors Bong Joon-Ho and Megan Griffiths, as well as George Takei. It’s nice to have mementos of many of these moments.
3) I made a movie – It’s world premiering at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 29th (buy tickets here). And in this video, you see many seconds where I’m hard at work, either editing the movie or sending it off to film festivals. I’m so grateful for the folks at Cut.com for joining me on this endeavor. I can’t wait for y’all to see the fruits of our labor.
All in all, I hope you find these videos provide at least a somewhat-interesting perspective into my life. They certainly are worthwhile for me to continue making, and I plan to continue them as long as I am able.