Looking up

Just remember to breathe...

Blogging can be dangerous

So I thought I could do a blog.  Obviously I AM doing a blog, because my fingers seem to be hitting the keyboard of their own free will.  But as I started surfing around, mostly in FB, I noticed that there are a lot of ways to piss people off.  I don't usually mind pissing people off, I just like to know when I am doing it.

That said...I'm going to post my pictures and my thoughts.  If I break any rules, tell me.  Nicely please.  If you give me an order, I will go waaaay out of my way to do the exact opposite.  Just ask my mother.

1000 Words

A photograph can say whatever you want it to. 

Just by framing the subject in a certain way...

Adjusting tiny little pieces of light...

Or color...

Showing stark contrast...

Adding emotion to the same image with tiny little tweaks...

To get it to scream, if you want it to.

People are like photographs.  

We adjust our color, our emotions, our light

so that our viewers see what we want them to see...

What do you see? 

Behaving like children

As I walked my daughter to the bus stop this morning, I couldn't help but notice the scene played like a mini-UN.  Muslim children, Hindi, Sikh, Caucasian, Hispanic, Black. All playing together, laughing and running around because that's just what children do.  They don't hate each other simply because one has a different skin color or prays another way to their version of what is really the same God.  They learn from one another.  Laughter is laughter, no matter the language in which it is delivered.  They don't care about republican or democrat.  They care that they get to run and play.

At what point in our lives do we learn to hate?  Did our parents teach us?  The media?  The church?  I think it's time we all start to realize that there are other points of view out there and while we may not agree with them, it would serve the world well if we all started behaving a little more like children.  

A Study in Shadow

Too many sleepless nights sitting in the shadows are bound to cause any soul to stop and reflect on a life led. And where it is going...

     

A mind and a body that can't shut down is forced to remember who, where she is.

Who, where she used to be. And who, where she WANTS to be...

 


Strong.  Capable.

Together.

      

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A Day in the Woods

I spent the day with my husband and daughter, tromping through the forest - Mancatcher would have caught us in a minute - and eating lovely freeze dried "food" from a bag.  It was a gorgeous day, perfect for hiking.  I got some great pictures.  What I realized though is that I have so done the tent living, barn living, even horse trailer living thing ... another life, another story.  I don't regret any of it for a minute, even the part where I almost ran my boyfriend over with my car- now that was funny.  That life shaped who I am now.  But, I like my bed.  I like running water.  I like electricity.  I don't think that makes me a bad person.  Now my husband and my daughter are getting ready to bed down for the night in a tent smaller than my camera bag, in the cold, in the woods, less than 3 miles from our nice, warm, thoroughly modern house.  We all make choices in life.

Owning Emotions

I subscribe to an email called "The Daily Om".  Sometimes it is cheesy.  Sometimes I get ads for perfume that will cleanse my chakras and heal my soul.  But sometimes I get a really good one that feels like it was written just for me.  It was about naming your emotions.  By acknowledging them, you own them, you address them for what they are and only then can you see them for what they are.  It doesn't make them go away, but it gives a sort of release from the apprehension of carrying around something that needs to be felt.

I have had a lot on my mind of late.  And, I think I have done a good job of owning my emotions.  I have let a lot of them out, tried to be as honest as possible.  Life is a journey.  You can only take that journey step by step, addressing what comes up when it comes up.  Own your mistakes.  Own your emotions.  And also own the fact that what others may see as mistakes, you know as truth.  It may not be truth for them, but  that really doesn't matter.

She runs

It is almost midnight on Friday.  I have a friend who has decided to run 50k tomorrow.  No that wasn't a typo and no, she isn't being chased.  At least not by anyone or anything in this reality.  In her reality is another story entirely.  She runs from the blob and she runs from her awful past.  She runs from her thoughts that spin wildly out of her control.  She runs.  Not figuratively, but literally, through levels of pain even I can't imagine.  She runs.  All weather, all hours of the day and night, she runs.  It's what she does.  She takes a lot of heat for all of this running.  She never stops.  She never quits.  So, the irony is, while she is busy doing all this running, the woman I know never runs from anything.

To Do List

After a very productive therapy session yesterday, I decided to make out a to do list.  Here it is:

TO DO:  today and for the rest of my life, in no particular order

• become a famous photographer
• write a book
• clean the basement
• clean the garage
• vacuum the house
• scrub the kitchen floor
• have one of many conversations with my husband about the direction of our marriage 
• do the laundry
• play with my daughter
• walk the dogs
• get a college degree
• clean off my desk
• do the dishes
• make a difference in someone’s life
• determine the appropriate time to make my inside voice my outside voice
• learn how to be happy
• meditate
• feel better
• sleep when I am supposed to 
• don’t yell at my kid just because I am irritated with life
• make the beds
• dust
• go to the gym
• quit smoking
• save the planet
• make dinner
• achieve enlightenment