Monotony

I’ve been asked who-knows-how-many times what I’ll be doing for the 10 months Johnna and I will be gone. The short answer: pretty much anything I feel like.

Officially, I am simply a dependent tagging along for the ride as Johnna gets paid by the German government to teach English. As far as responsibilities, I have none.

That being said:

It would be a tragedy if I wasted this major opportunity by sitting around on Reddit or playing Breath of the Wild all day (you know, things I am already very proficient at in the United States). Instead, I plan to use this opportunity to learn new skills and hone skills that I have. One major skill I plan on practicing extensively is photography and videography. If you know me, you probably know I am an amateur photographer and have been for probably 6 or 7 years now. You also might know that I’ve done a fair bit of videography for my job, for school and for my friends.

One thing I’ve discovered about the creative process for these hobbies is that after a while, it can become difficult to find inspiration because everything I’ve grown up around effectively becomes invisible because I’ve been exposed to it my whole life and I’ve become desensitized to my surroundings. I haven’t picked up a camera for anything except school assignments in a while because I feel like I have nothing interesting to point it at, which I know isn’t true. What someone else might find significant, I may write off as being mundane.

Monotonous.

And that is the biggest thing I want to get out of my time in another country. I want to learn to see beauty in monotony. Not just in terms of visual media, but also in the people I meet and talk to, the places I go and the experiences I have every day.

With our move to Germany coming up, Johnna and I have been making it a point to spend plenty of time with our families. From weekends at the lake, to roadtrips, we’ve really been appreciating the rest of our time here in the United States. Simply having the knowledge that everything I’m doing now is the last chance I’ll have has given me a new perspective and appreciation for small things that I normally pay no attention to. Every walk around the neighborhood, every meal with the family, every hour I clock at work is now almost my last (for a while, anyway) and that makes me want to hold on to these memories more than ever before.

Spending a significant amount of time in another country - fully immersed in another culture that I know nearly nothing about - will give me a new perspective of my life in the United States and my place in the world as a whole that I simply can’t get by spending my entire life within a 100-mile radius from the place I grew up. I plan to make the most of this amazing opportunity Johnna and I have. And I hope by the end of it, I am able to tell a visual story that inspires myself and others to get out and see the beauty our world has to offer - especially the beauty in the things that have become invisible to us.

-Kyer Lasswell