One Second From Thirty Days

This is a video (click the image above) featuring one second from thirty recent days of my life. I was inspired by a friend’s Facebook post and Cesar Kuriyama’s One Second Everyday project. The idea is to record some video each day and periodically edit together compilations of single seconds. You’ll end up with about 4 minutes of video for a year.

I’m really bad at remembering specific days. If there’s a big event or something important happens, there’s a good chance I’ll remember. More typical woke-up-got-breakfast-did-work-watched-TV-hung-out-with-friends-went-to-bed days, those I rarely remember.

My brain is good at information. I can remember things I read or learned or something someone told me, but connecting that information to a certain day or time is harder for me. I think this is fairly typical, at least I hope it is. But I have at least one or two friends with super sharp event memories. They can recall to me almost everything that they did on Tuesday two weeks ago. I can’t do that. Can you?

That’s why the one second every day idea appeals to me. I’m hoping that by making these compilations, I’ll stop losing days. My event memory will get better and better. And even if it doesn’t, at least I’ll have an external source that can keep reminding me of the things I’ve done. (Cesar Kuriyama talks about how it helped his memory in this TED talk.)

Using only one second also takes creative pressure off of me. I’ve been shooting a lot of video in the past year, but it was always with the hopes of editing together something longer and grander. Maybe something like a documentary of my travels. Editing video is a lot of work. And sifting through hours and hours of footage with the hopes of making some professional(ish) documentary is an intimidating task. When I’m constrained to only a single second, it actually takes a lot of the weight off. All I have to do is grab a memorable or funny moment and stick that after the previous moment. Easy. (There is still the inherent stress of choosing a song.)

I’m still deciding exactly how often to put these together (a month feels too short, six months feels too long) but look for more videos in the future. And if you have any suggestions or criticism, you should let me know on Twitter.