Inside Gigi's World

I know I have been talking a lot about beginnings and ends and I haven’t given much explanation. The reason is simple, a professor once told me, “mystery is what keeps your readers coming back”. I guess it is all a matter of preference because I also had a professor tell me once to “dig deeper” which we will get back to at another point…mystery, right?

I digress, as I recently shared, I had to come up with a proposal and a plan for an individualized study for a career prep class that I am taking this semester. (For those of you who missed it, quick recap: senior (first semester), a project that I feel passionate enough to work on for the remainder of the year…blah blah blah —see previous blog). 

I pitched my idea to my professor which she agreed was a meaningful project that would not only carry me for the remainder of this semester but to also follow me through my last semester as an independent study. 

I will be working with the sensitive subject matter of addiction—again, see previous blog (Nothing like shameless, self-advertisement). 

I originally wondered if I’d have enough people that would be willing to participate. One night I made a random Facebook post asking if I’d have anyone willing enough to sit down and chat with me about the subject of addiction. Happily and sadly at the same time, I had a large number of people reach out to me, hoping to take part in my project. 

The actual structure of my project is this: I will interview people whose lives have been affected in one way or another by addiction. I will also photograph them in meaningful ways to their stories. Once I complete the interview, I will then write their story and carefully choose the image I see best fit to go along with their piece. The end game is to hopefully have my work posted in a gallery but the more important takeaway is that we will be able to place faces with the stories of addiction and maybe once we do that, we can become more passionate and begin to find healing in our trauma. 

Is this too big of a pipe dream? Maybe. 

Could this project tug at my heart and open old wounds? I’m expecting it will. 

Will I need to be patient with myself as I navigate this project? Most definitely. 

Could this project fizzle out and become nothing more than an attempt for a college student to get a good grade? Possibly, but I hope not. 

At its very basic level, I just hope I don’t fail. “At what?” you ask. I haven’t figured that out yet.