1 Second Everyday

I’ve always been sentimental about moving. When I was eight years old, I said goodbye to my first childhood home. Even though our new house was only fifteen miles away, it was a big deal to leave behind my elementary school, neighborhood friends, and my favorite climbing tree. Equipped with a pink plastic camera, I took a series of (probably terrible) photos documenting our home, from our mailbox to the laundry room. Somewhere along the way to my new neighborhood, the pink camera was lost. We have plenty of family photos posed on the front porch, around the table for Thanksgiving, and playing on our backyard swing set. But it’s been years since I’ve been able to picture our laundry room, and I wish that roll of film had been developed so I could look back through my own eyes.

As I finish unpacking the third place I’ve called home in the past two years, I’m sharing my One Second Everyday video. The 1SE app allows you to easily edit and stitch together one-second video clips from your phone. A friend introduced me to the app about a year ago, just before I moved from DC to Florida. It has been a great visual diary for collecting a time of life and the places it happened. I’ve always been fascinated by stop motion, and 1SE videos share the choppiness that makes stop motion so fascinating.

Attempting to take a video to represent each day forced me to consider the beauty of everyday moments and document ordinary parts life, much like my childhood laundry room. Other days it was impossible to choose just one second. Throughout the year, I sometimes felt regret when I forgot to film something that would have made an awesome clip. Other times I was glad to have been swept away in the moment, enjoying it rather than fumbling with a phone. Despite the feature that allows you to set 1SE reminders, I often missed a day and became increasingly grateful for “live photos” to fill the gaps.

Making a 1SE movie has been different from social media, because the final product will always be vastly more meaningful to me as the creator. Each clip serves as a gateway to a memory and encourages self-reflection through storytelling. It also contrasts the instant gratification of a Tweet or Instagram post because it has been over a year in the making.

There is a Miriam Adeney quote that says, “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” In a way, my 1SE movie allows me to revisit places I used to call home - hear the sounds of a sizzling barbeque or the voices of my friends calling to each other on the soccer field.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
– Miriam Adeney

Looking back on this past year, you’ll see why I couldn’t have asked for a better home base while I started working remotely, took fourteen flights, planned my wedding, started playing soccer again, trained for a half marathon, and took full advantage of Orlando’s theme parks. Enjoy!