A second year of printing personal images and I realized something important: the exercise is a lesson in itself. It doesn’t matter if it’s “good”, what matters is that you engage with the process and created something tangible, something you can hold in your hands and flip through with your children as they grow that will remind them of this year.

We wandered. We traveled. I introduced them to an Old Growth forest and showed them the ocean for the first time. They climbed, they danced in the rain. We went camping and waded in creeks, we chopped wood and drug logs behind quads. They fished and didn’t get dressed in the morning and collected insects to keep as pets. We went to appointments, did chores, and made art. They went to their first funeral and we talked about death. We visited family and friends, and family and friends visited us while they ran barefoot in the garden and pulled weeds. We got sick. We got bored. We got curious. Yet, this is only a brief snapshot of the year. The book is much larger and more encompassing, but even so it does not contain everything. 200 pages isn’t enough, but these are all moments I want to remember.

Print the images, engage with intentional curation. Arrange them through intuition only. Aim not for perfection, or even artistry, but for feeling. You’ll know when it’s right. You’ll feel when it’s off. Try not to overthink it. Next year, I’ll do it again, and better.