Here’s a quick experiment in documentation of time and space. For each day in April, I captured one short video, trimmed each to one second, and spliced them together consecutively. The result is a short, entrancing blur of daily life–uniquely mundane and mundanely unique–stitched into thirty seconds. Individually, each second contains enough context to create a meaningful narrative; Together, this quilt of sound and light and space fades into an indecipherable abstraction, much like the collective memory of these lived experiences.

These thirty seconds remind me of how appreciative I am to have days filled by laughter and friendship in large part because of my Challenge Detroit peers. Each day of my life is consistently filled with the acquisition of knowledge (from speakers like Ta-Nehisi Coates who spoke at UDM on April 4 or discussions at the Urban Consulate) and creative collaboration (all my work with Hamilton Anderson Associates and Challenge Detroit). To see beauty and excitement in the seemingly mundane–in an eight-minute hurried walk to work each morning, in a cloudy bike commute, in the dim light enveloping friends at Northern Lights Lounge–is an opportunity and gift we can choose to receive every single day. I choose to receive it.

The light and smell of spring (longer days that become longer nights, the familiar scent of wet asphalt, renewed delight for fresh tulips blooming in sidewalk planters) have a tendency to induce nostalgia and reflection in my bones. As I look back on these thirty days, on this seasonal change, on these ten months in Detroit, I feel full. I feel full of love for friends I hadn’t met one year ago, full of understanding for the people of Detroit, of knowledge I’ve gained through experiences here, of comfortable uncertainty of what’s to come, of appreciation for the boundless opportunities presented in each day, of life.