I arrived in Washington, DC on August 20, 2026.
The next day was my twenty-sixth birthday. It is also the day I began One Life in Progress.
The project has a large shape: I want to live in all fifty states. Its first question is smaller and harder to finish: How much life can I fit into one life?
Washington, DC is Opening Chapter 00. It sits before State 01 and outside the count of fifty.
In the room where I stayed, a suitcase sat open on a striped bed. A framed world map hung near the window. Those ordinary details are part of the first record.
The suitcase was still full of clothes. This was a short stay, from August 20 to August 23, and I would be moving on.
I also photographed the Metro. People moved beneath the vaulted concrete ceiling, past signs and escalators, while I paid attention to the space around them.
The room and the station make different kinds of pictures. One held my things for a few days. The other was built for passing through.
I photographed a copy of Die With Zero by Bill Perkins there, too. It is one more object in the record of that opening stay.
On August 23, I left DC for the Raleigh area of North Carolina. That was State 01.
DC did not need to be one of the fifty to matter. It gave this project a date, a place, and its first photographs.
The question was still open when I left. It is still open now.
