Lena Josfeld in Germany recently completed her 365 Days of Star-Gazing project...
When did your project start/end? My year of stars began on September 6th 2011 and ran through September 5th 2012. The date for beginning my project had no significance at all, it simply felt right to start NOW. The end, however, turned out to be perfectly timed without me realising it until it was merely a week away: It sent me off into one of the best holidays of my life, closing the project with one of the best concerts I’ve ever had the privilege to attend.
What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? Never ever would I have thought I could commit to a project like this and actually finish it. So there’s one big lesson for me. I also learned (rather by force) to compromise and lower some standards I had for my own work which were way too high to be comfortable. Lesson number two: I cannot rush creativity and I cannot force it to pay me a visit whenever I want to. It simply is not possible to suit perfectionism every day for an entire year – so I had better forget about it right from the start! ;-)
Lesson number three: It can be so incredibly easy to get people to participate in the weirdest things... Often they would become really enthusiastic to help me with my stars. This came as quite a surprise to me and made me feel incredibly glad and grateful.
I can’t say I acquired any particular new skill. But I did some things I had never done before like carving a pumpkin, making a bead figure, Chinese calligraphy, encaustic, marbling candles, rolling sushi rolls, modeling with papier machée... Basically, this project gave me a very good reason to try whatever I wanted to try – really cool!
In what ways did the project change your life? There were times when it didn’t really matter at all and I almost forgot about the next star. At other times, my days seemed to revolve around those stars and I felt a crazy rush of energy that let me accomplish things I would never have thought possible before. I don’t see any profound changes having happened to my life, but this project did make me a little more bold and daring (out of necessity for some of the ideas I had). It also enforced a kind of playfulness, thinking-outside-the box, and ignorig-the-usual-rules, which I have always liked but tended to lose rather easily during the grey, everyday life. I hope I can keep some of this attitude even without daily stars.
Now what? Now, I definitely need a break. Towards the end of this year of stars, I couldn’t help but consider all kinds of ideas for a potential next project. However, right now is not the time for anything like this on a daily basis. But I have now tasted blood, so who knows...? If I’m going to start anything else soon, it may quite possibly contain a lot of food... my latest obsession. :-)
As for the stars: I really need to give them a little more substance than only the virtual images and writings that might disappear with any server crash or hacker attack or whatnot... I’ve grown way too fond of them to not have them somewhere close to my bedside table. ;-) Still thinking about the best possible way to make that happen...
Read Lena's original 365 interview HERE.
See all of Lena's stars HERE.
When did your project start/end? My year of stars began on September 6th 2011 and ran through September 5th 2012. The date for beginning my project had no significance at all, it simply felt right to start NOW. The end, however, turned out to be perfectly timed without me realising it until it was merely a week away: It sent me off into one of the best holidays of my life, closing the project with one of the best concerts I’ve ever had the privilege to attend.
What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? Never ever would I have thought I could commit to a project like this and actually finish it. So there’s one big lesson for me. I also learned (rather by force) to compromise and lower some standards I had for my own work which were way too high to be comfortable. Lesson number two: I cannot rush creativity and I cannot force it to pay me a visit whenever I want to. It simply is not possible to suit perfectionism every day for an entire year – so I had better forget about it right from the start! ;-)
Lesson number three: It can be so incredibly easy to get people to participate in the weirdest things... Often they would become really enthusiastic to help me with my stars. This came as quite a surprise to me and made me feel incredibly glad and grateful.
I can’t say I acquired any particular new skill. But I did some things I had never done before like carving a pumpkin, making a bead figure, Chinese calligraphy, encaustic, marbling candles, rolling sushi rolls, modeling with papier machée... Basically, this project gave me a very good reason to try whatever I wanted to try – really cool!
In what ways did the project change your life? There were times when it didn’t really matter at all and I almost forgot about the next star. At other times, my days seemed to revolve around those stars and I felt a crazy rush of energy that let me accomplish things I would never have thought possible before. I don’t see any profound changes having happened to my life, but this project did make me a little more bold and daring (out of necessity for some of the ideas I had). It also enforced a kind of playfulness, thinking-outside-the box, and ignorig-the-usual-rules, which I have always liked but tended to lose rather easily during the grey, everyday life. I hope I can keep some of this attitude even without daily stars.
Now what? Now, I definitely need a break. Towards the end of this year of stars, I couldn’t help but consider all kinds of ideas for a potential next project. However, right now is not the time for anything like this on a daily basis. But I have now tasted blood, so who knows...? If I’m going to start anything else soon, it may quite possibly contain a lot of food... my latest obsession. :-)
As for the stars: I really need to give them a little more substance than only the virtual images and writings that might disappear with any server crash or hacker attack or whatnot... I’ve grown way too fond of them to not have them somewhere close to my bedside table. ;-) Still thinking about the best possible way to make that happen...
Read Lena's original 365 interview HERE.
See all of Lena's stars HERE.
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