My eye caught on a specific pile of dust on the floor. Through some bizarre pattern of foot traffic or air currents the threshold to the upstairs bathroom serves as a catch-all for lint, dust, and tumbleweeds of cat hair. I ran for my camera.

With my belly on the oak floorboards I spun the aperture dial to let in plenty of light, narrowing depth of field and intensifying the pure, white sunlight making fuzzy highlights on every stray hair.

Of course for a time I troubled my mind over the validity of photographing the intimate details of my house. I expected most photographers proved their worth by way of innovative subjects, new places to shoot, seeking and finding. In the end I couldn't deny my captivation with domesticity. I stole many sunny mornings before work to document the quality of light across the floorboards, the particular arrangement of a stack of library books on the table, crumbs, a dish out of place, a warm halo around my bedroom lamp exposing a deep, blood-red wall.

As I fumbled around on the floor to frame my shot I was briefly concerned about getting my sweater dirty. Had this much dust really accumulated in a week? With each smooth motion of the shutter I reinvented my space. I saw my home anew. At once I wove an elaborate story and documented my surroundings simple as they were.

I continued on my way eventually, replaced the lens cap and vanished into another household project. Those images I created stayed frozen in the camera, waiting to be pulled out and pressed and polished, made into something altogether unique and not at all the mundane bits of dust settled on the floor.

I've had a few interesting conversations this week around self-publishing in general and blogging in particular. A coworker and fellow blogger shared my sentiments about blogs: sometimes it's just so difficult to keep the momentum going.

The question I've been playing with – and relating to the relative difficulty of maintaining a serious blog – is, what validates self-published work? Before the internet allowed us infinite possibilities for self-promotion, creative work passed through a limited number of routes to reach the public eye. Written work like mine would need to be picked up by a newspaper, a magazine, a publishing company even.

Now, with a truly global market for ideas, self-promotion has become an art in its own right. Words + Images exists not because an editor thought it worth printing, but because I imagined it and created a home for it and made a commitment to complete one post weekly, no later than Tuesday morning. Promotion, visibility, recognition, and success are not guaranteed, and standard rules of advertising do not apply. Instead, underground phenomena spread virally, promoted by millions of Gen Y'ers and Millenials vying to be the first to discover the newest cool thing on the internet.

Is this what validates self-published work? Trying to get one's work seen – whether in a gallery, magazine, book, etc. -- in traditional media can be incredibly demoralizing, and self-publishing can at times feel like an easy way out. Lately I'm inclined to feel otherwise. Keeping this blog going is a labor of love and it relies entirely on my own personal motivation to keep making the time commitment week after week. Not only have I continued to write for Words + Images, but I have spent many a weekend correcting bugs, solving emergencies, and attending to other overhead.

I'm of a mind that self-publishing and the internet have provided the next evolution of “art for art's sake.” With it we see a liberation of the artist, and a new kind of dedication: one that doesn't rely on acceptance letters or royalties or good reviews, but solely on the creator's will to keep it alive even when it seems no one is looking.

Between tonight's and last week's posts I bought a new notebook. As often happens, a flurry of writing followed this acquisition. Since you asked, I succumbed to the Moleskine black, 3.5 x 5.5” cahier squared notebook. This was after I walked down St. Paul Street to discover the stationary store had closed, forcing me to trudge over to the Barnes & Noble for a greeting card but reassuring me that at least I wouldn't end up spending more money on notebooks.

At any rate, I have been using my new, purse-sized graph paper companion to keep notes about this blog and my recent photography. With this heightened awareness I was actually surprised by how often these images cross my mind on a normal day. When I write my fleeting ideas down, my next fleeting idea can build upon what I recorded in my notebook instead of starting from scratch again.

I have been able to gather a healthy number of preliminary thoughts from my journal around how my writing will interact with the photos when I show them. I have also given thought to my context as a woman recording and making sacred the everyday workings of the home. What does this mean? Am I necessarily communicating with other women, or just documenting my own unique experience in a domestic space?

Interestingly, I also dusted off three very different books I happen to have in my personal library. All of these books came to me by complete chance: caught my eye in the bookstore, turned up at the book wagon when I volunteered at the local arts festival back home, and snatched from my great-grandmother's house, respectively.

• What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us (2000)
  

• The Feminine Mystique (1963)

• Womanhood and Marriage (1922)
  

In addition to my own photographing and writing and considering subtle implications (see below), I think I'll give these a read (or re-read). Who knows, maybe I'll get some ideas. Maybe I'll seek out some other books tangentially related to my images. Feel free to throw some books my way in the comments.

Frustrating days happen.

On this particular evening, I made a positive decision to quit stalking angrily around the house and walk to the library. Walking has always calmed me, mellowing my mood with each footstep I seal against the pavement. No matter what, a solid walk always injects a certain feeling of openness into my chest, drawing my breath toward the sky.

I've always loved to lose myself in the library, hiding away in a corner and running my hand over the uneven rows and columns of spines, delighting in the unlikely juxtaposition of subject matter in the nonfiction section: knitting, wine, bathroom remodeling, crafty handbags. Somewhere in this odd commingling of volumes my fingertips come to rest upon a book titled It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys.

This title describes me in such an essential way I have to pick it up. It is full of language-based exercises such as making lists, thinking of life in terms of straightforward descriptions. I figure it's worth a try since I'm certainly not going to complete the series of visualization exercises in 4 Weeks to an Organized Life.

While I'm in the library my husband calls to ask what sort of soda he should buy at the store: root beer, cream soda, or berry lemonade. I debate sending a text message from the lobby after I've checked out this new book along with a copy of Stitch and Bitch, but think better of it. He can figure it out. I still need to walk.

My brisk yet meandering journey leads me down Union Avenue, past Formstone and brick and cedar shingle houses. The city possesses a nourishing beauty I can see and hear and breathe as my feet put square after square of sidewalk behind me. When I walk alone I see through the lens of Writer and Photographer, my mind constantly cataloging snippets of images, words, phrases. Rough, weathered brick; crumbling stone surrounding an archway of rusted steel; a clamoring bell urging railroad gates to lower into place as the Light Rail slides into the station; Dick Cheney's face in blue stencil on the sidewalk under the JFX; the cool, dark underside of the expressway contrasting the cars speeding along hot asphalt overhead.

Suddenly there is a young hipster girl in front of me carrying a green bike with one tire removed. The bike is carelessly draped across her back and she is walking briskly, her t-shirt soaked through with sweat. I tuck this away in my memory, too: her damp, almost-black curls barely held in check by her headband; her determined stride, powered by lean muscles concealed beneath the soft, milky skin of her thighs; the careless ease with which she carries the bike frame on her petite body.

Hipster Girl is still walking, starting up the hill toward Druid Hill Park when I turn toward home. I wonder where she is going with that half-dismantled bike, whether she is a figment of my imagination. Eventually I come up out of the valley and resurface on our street, my shirt damp from sweat, my feet passing under familiar sycamores.