Day 365 of the my Project 365. Surely this is the last day of the project? Or is it?  Project 365 runs for a year, which traditionally starts on 1st January to end on the 31st of December, as the 365th day. However, this year is a leap year. There are 366 days in a year. So I think we will have 365 days of photos and a BONUS day tomorrow! Yay!

I didn’t expect to be this psyched on the final day, but I am. It has been such an exciting year. This project has helped me value my life this year even more. You know that sometimes with all our activities, chores and routines your days just seems to mesh together in a blur, that you can’t tell one day from another when suddenly you are faced with another weekend? Well, no blurry days for me this year (excuse the pun). Every day there was something. Not always special, but mostly unique.

I’ll start with the downside of doing this project:

• Stress. At the beginning it was not so stressful, as I exclusively used my iPhone to take photos. It was easy to do the post edit, write up and upload, because I could do all that in my iPhone. However, as of April I started using my DSLR to take photos, so the challenge went up a notch. It was stressful only on bad days; when I was too busy I often only remembered to take photos really late at night, and I was already too exhausted to do anything, let alone take nice photos. Sick days were always hard too.
• Too many crappy shots in my library.  Every day I downloaded several pictures onto my computer, but I did not always chuck the bad ones into the trash.
• Funny that I thought I would have a lot of downsides, but I don’t. Probably have to ask my family on this one.

The highlights of doing this project:

• I became more skilful in photography. I guess it’s true what they say that if you want to learn more you have to take more photos. I was exposed to taking photos in different kinds of lighting, various subjects, and locations, and I can confidently say I am better at it now than I was in January 2012
• A full 2012 journal with pictures! Since I also love to write a little something to accompany most of my photos, those posts became pages that I can go back to. A thought, experience and many sweet memories have been journaled, to be cherished in years to come
• Great new online and off-line contacts. So many wonderful comments and ‘likes’ from fellow bloggers and twitter/Facebook friends made me happy and embarrassed at the same time. It’s a wonderful feelings to have people love what you love doing. I love the interactions I had with fellow bloggers, so much to learn from each other
• A healthy mind. My family was fully aware of this project, so I always had at least half an hour of uninterrupted ‘me-time’ every day, which means A LOT for me. I know it doesn’t sound much to most of you, but as a busy mom with two kids, this allocated ‘me-time’ really kept the ‘craziness’ away

This might be the end of this project, but this won’t be the last  of me. I intend to keep on blogging, or maybe doing a different photography project in the future. To all my readers, I thank you for all your support; I may not show it enough, but I really appreciate all of it.

The day 365 post is dedicated to my constant inspiration. My two energy balls, T (Mr 8) and K (Ms 4). Love you loads, kiddos..!