1 Second Everyday is an app that helps you capture and compile one second of video every day of your life.

I kept up my 1 Second Everyday app for all of 2016 (which you can view here), so trying in 2017 wasn’t a novel experience.

My main takeaways from my first year of 1SE were: taking one video every day is significantly less burdensome and invasive than you might imagine, it’s a good exercise to find memorable moments in even the most mundane of days and viewing your complete video at the end of the year is surprisingly visceral.

This year, I tried to pay greater attention to beauty in my 1SE clips. I tried to capture the more aesthetically-pleasing parts of my everyday. Instead of taking what I now almost view as “cheap-shots” of my friends (see: semi-regular close-up zooms of my roommate’s face in 2016), I attempted to capture the moments of friendships that I found deeply beautiful or humorous or otherwise meaningful. I also made a greater attempt to make the overall video cleaner; as opposed to my splotchy, forgetful 2016 video, I did a much better job of ensuring a visual for every single day of 2017 (aside from the week in June when I went phone-less at camp). Some clips are intensely pixelated despite the high quality original video, but alas, I’m not smart enough about video know what went wrong or how to fix it. Regardless, I put much more effort this year into making the video look good.

The year-long process is one thing, but seeing the year's-end, 6-minute video is another. The app won't let me watch the seconds all compiled together until the very end of the year, but that doesn't stop me from spending several hours throughout the year watching and re-watching individual one-second clips. Over the year, I definitely choose “favorite” seconds – the ones with the funniest sound-clips, the most beautifully-arranged composition, the most positive memories attached.

It almost startles me the first time watching the full video because the relentless speed of a second makes those favorite clips mean nothing. During the year, I might play and replay my “favorite” second of my friends sitting around the dinner table, but in the full year’s video, that particular moment means no more and no less than all the other dinners, evenings of homework or days at work that surround it. I’m always shocked – and nearly indignant – when I watch the final video and the seconds go by so incredibly fast. In a lot of ways, my aesthetic planning nearly goes to waste since one second isn’t really enough time to admire or even notice that sort of thing.

But maybe I can find some gratification for my attempted artistry in the continuity of some clips. I noticed it more in this year’s video than last year's (which makes me concerned that I might just be forcing it). On my first viewing of my 2017 video, I noticed multiple instances of composition similarities between two seconds or a nearly-seamless camera turning from second to second. If not a visual continuity, several consecutive seconds seemed to have the same pitch of background noise or the same volume of conversation. Whether or not that continuity really exists or I'm making it up, it seemed neat to me.

I suppose I can only tell you so much about my 1 Second Everyday experience before you’ll get bored out of your mind. I honestly can’t expect anyone to be as interested in this sort of portrayal of my life as I am.

1 Second Everyday, to me, is an admittedly selfish endeavor, and I can’t encourage enough for you to try it yourself. While to you, this video is one second after another of nearly meaningless, definitely plot-less, mildly interesting clips, to me each of these 365 seconds cause a visceral, immediate reaction to memories made, feelings felt, books read, places visited, friendships established. I would encourage you to try 1SE so you too can experience those important 365 seconds.