Capturing “right now” photos for November’s OLW prompt was hard. I chose old photos (from earlier this year) instead. For some reason, when I have to choose photos that make my word visible, I feel inadequate because at the moment when the photo was taken I probably wasn’t thinking of my word. But I like to think that, even if I wasn’t thinking about CULTIVATE all the time, CULTIVATE was acting silently on my behalf. It feels nice to think that way.

From choosing photos where I see my word, I always learn different things than what I learn from writing a reflection. With words I express things the way I see them in my head (most times in ways that are not totally real because they just express a desire) and with pictures I actually get to see the word in action in a more relatable way. That’s what I loved from this month’s prompt.

I completed this assignment really fast and that’s one of the things that I didn’t like from the OLW workshop. I know it might sound ironic but, for something like this, I like to have constant follow up, not just one time tasks. Maybe I should just have put a “cultivate” background as my phone’s screen saver to keep it present at all times.

I guess that for next month we’ll do a recap for the year and I can’t wait to write my final reflections and my ideas for 2020. I am 90% sure that I have found a word (this time effortless!) and I feel very excited because it is a word that gives continuity to CULTIVATE in a very similar context.
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I create my pages on my iPad using the Affinity Photo app which have functionalities similar to Photoshop. The handwritten text is added using Procreate (also an iPad app) which I love love love!
You can read about my other OLW pages here.
One Little Word is a year long project started by the awesome Ali Edwards in 2006 where she choses a word to focus on, meditate, and reflect on throughout the year.