My last post of 2022! HAPPY NEW YEAR HIVE!

Hey Hivers!

It's the last day of the year, and usually, we tend to reflect. Reflecting to see how and what we can do better for the next year. How are you going to end 2022 and start 2023?!

This year, I wanted to participate, but differently, I wanted to reflect on myself as a consumer, and on the things that I appreciate. If you have been following my 30-day challenge about the not-so-ordinary ordinary items, you may have found out that I've been reflecting quite a lot on these items. Pondering about why I use them, and the thoughts just came about anything else related to it (or not :D), which was for me a surprising bonus as I like to think about all sorts of stuff. And also, this post is a small gift for those content creators who are just starting to become one and are looking for cool ways to create content.

Either way, this challenge was a lot of fun, and quite challenging.

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My 30 reflections

In case you haven't been following all of the posts about these objects and thoughts, I displayed a 30-day grid below. For me, this is a way to have a quick overview of the items, and I must say: this grid looks awesome. It shows a lot to me, probably different in the way how you may look at it. I had so much fun photographing all of these photographs. And looking at it gives me a good idea of what I've written and what I've been using. If you want to see more posts about this challenge, check out the #notsoordinary tag on Hive. Some more awesome people participated with lots of cool and awesome reflections.

_{Stats for nerds
I was also curious about the stats for these posts. How many words I have written, how many photographs I took, and how much time I've been spending on it. Writing and photographing that is. I wrote over 29,000 words (including this one), took a total of 159 photographs, and spend about 26 hours in total of photographing, post-processing, editing, and writing. Dang, that's pretty productive cool!}

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A small experiment

This was first a personal experiment, just for myself. I wanted to see how I use and think about ordinary things. It was actually pretty hard to get a list of 30 items, but once I got the list done, I could finally start. But at some point, writing about specific items always seemed to be rather difficult, but as soon as I went for it, there was always something new to be learned or to think about. At some times it did leave me the feeling of generic and rushed paragraphs, but I always learned something new. I guess that some objects just speak for themselves.

The experiment grew a bit more once more people started to join. @thatkidsblack who I've known for years on Hive participated as well and shared his stories about objects and thoughts and perspectives in general. It was a surprise to see @nanixxx joining as well, as I've never seen her before on Hive, I even addressed her as man in my first reactions. @livinguktaiwan joined a few times and I bet she is the reason why more people started to join the challenge. And not to forget @soyunasantacruz who shared a daily object with us as well. It just takes a few people to spark a movement, and that was part of my personal experiment as well if I was lucky enough.

Luckily for me, a few people joined the challenge, so I could read and check out their posts. I could also analyze how they would execute it. Seeing other people doing the same thing differently is quite valuable as you can learn from each other. Some say it is a real challenge, but from the start till the end it felt like that for me as well. But I did play differently. And I was wondering if people did the same, and if so felt the same.

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Schedule

One of the reasons why I made this challenge, was to show the guys at @ColdBeetRootSoup that it can be done, to create content for the year, it just is a mental state of mind and costs you some preparation. It is something that I've taught some of my clients who hired me to do their content strategy, and it is a strategy that I used to apply when I was growing my Instagram back in 2015-2016. In 2017 I abandoned Instagram, and never got fully back into it. But whenever I think about it, it reminds me that I worked with a schedule and that the work paid off.

The thing is, I finished photographing all of the objects on the 6th of December. This means that our living room was a photo studio for about a week.

I spend about 8 hours or so photographing all of the objects. I thought this would save me some time while not diluting the quality of my photographs and post-processing. This couldn't be done otherwise. It would be nearly impossible to set up a studio, create and think about a setting and photograph each object on a different day. The time that goes into setting up a studio alone already costs at least 1 hour. Focus lights on specific objects can take up another hour if you want perfect lighting. Photographing objects for me is to connect with them first, and then photograph them quickly right after I've observed the object.

So that's what I did, and this is a secret most content strategists don't want you to know. It saves you so much time while being in a flow of production. Our state of mind forgets our surroundings, and soon we forget that we are working in a professional photography studio at home. Of course, I had limited myself to keep it challenging, for one; I could only use 1 studio light instead of 5. I could only use 1 reflection screen. I could not use my smaller reflectors but had to be creative with something else (like paper), I could use all of the other 'home' lights, and I could only shoot with 1 lens.





The reason why I had all these challenges for the challenge is that this challenge was also for training purposes. I wanted to get back in touch with product photography, I wanted to see how quickly I could come up with solutions/concepts with fixed data (1 lens/1 light), and of course, I wanted to see the results of it. It has been so much fun, and I did surprise myself. I expected things not to become perfect, but some shots are just perfect for this challenge. They are used, old, scratched, and dirty. Even though I spend a decent amount of time cleaning most of them.

Working with a schedule allowed me to be quick, and to be able to think to fast-forward and have solutions in my mind before even starting. It also allowed me to observe most of the objects as I grabbed them and held them in the light that was very close to me. I just had to turn on the button to see what I was looking at. The clementine was one object that surprised me with how it reflected. So, @coldbeetrootsoup: if you work with a schedule, and do the preparation: you can create content for the rest of the year. This doesn't mean you have to post daily, but weekly or monthly is perfectly fine as well. Read this post and you'll find out that this right here is the proof.

What does new mean to you?

Most of these objects are years old. Yet, I introduced them to you, does this mean that they appear as "new" to you? I could've bought all of these items brand-new or 2nd handed, and still, they appear as something new. It is an illusion that only our mindset controls. What about those brand-new pairs of jeans at the store? They are stored months ago in the back of the store and picked almost a year before. What about those clementines that I photographed? I bet they aren't fresh, and they probably have been there for a few weeks.

I'm saying that nothing appears to be new, not until we lay eyes on it when it is presented to us for the first time. I showed @thatkidsblack a few photographs before publishing, to him, some photographs weren't new, but the stories were.

This is a strategy that I told and sold to my clients. Once they realized that they are their store manager that sells jeans, they realized as well that they could exchange the jeans for content. Whether it be about 'A year plan', 'A monthly recurring plan', or a weekly update.

This is such a powerful way to create and share content. The hardest part is to make it click and to identify your strengths and your story. If you're passionate, it should be easy for you to think of stuff that you can create. If not, you might start over and think about the fundamentals, why it is why you are doing what you do. This does demand quite some time to invest beforehand. But in the end, you will save so much time as you don't have to constantly restart, and much more time for other stuff.

If you're on a roll, you're on a roll.

So, when is something new? It is 'new' until we publish it for others to see.

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What else?

This challenge taught me a lot about myself. Some stuff I already knew, some things became more clear, and some things were quite surprising.

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It's nice to get rewarded first thing in the morning

Waking up to claiming rewards adds something to your mornings. For me, it is a metaphor for rewarding myself just for waking up (forgetting all the work that I have put in prior). It's like painting your day on a gifted clean canvas. In this example, it is an entire community that has gifted me that canvas, so why should I consider stopping to paint? I could start calling out many reasons but that's not the point. I stopped auto-claiming a few months ago, so I didn't miss out on that moment. Even if time got to me, as time moved forward, I was almost always greeted with some rewards whenever I visited Hive again. Mental bonus.

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How I'm closing 2022 I might not have resolutions for 2023, which is perfectly fine. For one, I know exactly how I'm closing 2022 so it doesn't matter how I enter 2023 (it never matters in), and personally, I think that's a bit more valuable than making these promises to myself. I'd rather understand why I'm doing the things how I have been doing them for the last couple of years than add stupid things to the list because but you have to make resolutions. Besides, every day we are invited to discover something new in this world. I learned quite a bit about myself with a 'simple' challenge, things that I probably have learned before, but may not have fully understood about myself. 1) Durable I've concluded that I'm much more durable than I thought I was. I'm not talking about recycling stuff, but I really pay a lot of attention to what I buy. I don't really believe in the Greenpeace people, but I do believe that we should find more balance in our lives. Nothing against Greenpeace, but everything extreme is... yeah, extreme. From eating meat to driving a car. Cleaning up products, to throwing or giving away stuff I no longer use. Everything should be balanced. This way not only the things around us become more durable, but our bodies and mind will become more durable as well. 2) Efficiency This I already knew. I always try to be super-efficient. I hate small talk, I try to avoid social events and try only to talk when I have to. The thing is, when someone talks to me about my passion, I seem to forget the rules and I'm anything but efficient. I can't really help it. It's the way how my brain works. Finding links, just like within this challenge was a test/experiment. How fast could I connect the dots, and link items to items? Efficiency is good, but it also makes me an asshole sometimes, as I often expect others to be efficient as well. Time is Time to me. 3) Quality above quantity This is a statement that I made when I started photographing. Better do something great, than so/so. How we perceive quality goes a lot deeper than the material aspect of it. For me, it is the way why something is achieved. A question I often ask myself is, why are we doing things? Why do we think we need something? It can give you a variety of different answers. Why do I strive for quality above quantity? It has most probably got something to do with sustainability, durability, efficiency, and the use of resources. Nothing is unlimited. I truly find joy in delivering quality. It makes me feel as if I did something right while limiting the resources I used to do something. 4) Detail orientated Yeah, call it perfectionism... another part of my personal experiment. I struggle with perfectionism for as long as I can remember. It is probably because we were drilled as kids. To always do our best and refuse help from others. You can always improve, yes, that's true, but when is enough = enough? I'm not unhappy with my perfectionism, as it has learned me to look and see great details. You can see it back in my work. If I'm going, to be honest: all these 30 photographs of the challenge are so-so. They aren't perfect (perfect for the challenge? yes), but maybe a few are "cool", and exactly that is why I did this challenge as well. I wanted to trigger myself and learn how to deal with it. I'm actually surprised that these photographs turned out so well in the little time that I spent on them.

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2023

I can't wait for 2023, as 2022 has been a very stressful year. Lackofcolor is doing better and better, which is a great sign for her recovery. I hope she'll get better soon and realizes life is more than just bothering about the outcomes that will never happen. I'm happy that I've found my way back to writing and sharing more on Hive again, and all thanks to her illness, as I wanted to write stuff for her while she was in the hospital. And look at that...

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Without further adieu: Happy New Year!

I will see you in 2023! I wish you all the best health, lots of fun, good food, and good wine/beer/whatever you're having. We've all experienced a lot together in 2022. Thank you all for reading my long-ass blog posts.

Cheers,
Ruben

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