Wordless Wednesday: More From Colorado

Wordless Wednesday-Please Rain, Bring Something Good

those moments.

{from my walk this weekend, no snow and some green shoots}

This year I vowed to get  a photographic education.  I was not satisfied with the quality of the non-credit photo classes here locally (Photography In Natural Light at 6:00 pm in winter?), so I picked up some photography books that caught my eye and showed potential to  give me those technical bits and pieces I seem to be lacking.  When we start talking about formats, and pixel sizes etc, etc, etc my mind gets a bit befuddled.

Sometimes I look at my photos and I wonder why am I taking these? What purpose comes from me having this photo on file along with the hundreds upon hundreds of others.  Then I remember what I set out to do in the beginning of this year.  I want to learn and grow artistically, but really my main purpose is to document this life.

{the day we said forget everything else and painted all afternoon}

I find it a wonderful thing that one day my children will look back and they will have a visual reminder of the  random things that lie beyond  what their memories can carry.  Memories they can peruse and remember fondly.  I like having documentation that there are simple things in this life that make me happy, like water droplets clinging to a leaf after a refreshing rain, or the first sign of a daffodil peeking out promising spring.

I think I need to remind myself that photography must be like this blog here.  I don’t blog for anyone else but myself.  It’s nice that there are people who stop by interested in my journey, but in the end, it’s B.W.O. like on the sidebar here, Blogging Without Obligation.  As much as I have hopes and dreams that maybe someday I could do something a little more with my photography, I think perhaps I need P.W.O.  Photographing Without Obligation.

{my brother on Christmas evening, before I sat on him and disrupted his sleep}

It wasn’t the  proficiency of the masters that made me want to pick up a camera.  It was the people here, here, here and here, that first started the yearning.   It was the bloggers that first opened my eyes to what a photo can mean and they were doing that with moments in everyday life.  That is what drives me to pick up the camera.

{my kitchen windowsill Thanksgiving morning}

There are two things that have stirred my photographic ambitions recently and they have nothing to do with technical prowess.  The first is the book Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig and I am eating this book alive.  The second is the Slice of Life project which I have as of today officially joined for April.  Both of these things reminded me why I picked up a camera in the first place.  Both of these make me feel I know that picking up the camera is the same as when I sit down here to write.  It is to grab the everyday.  Those everyday moments that are barely here before time pulls them away so fast.

{a moment, Karelyn reading to Annabelle}

I am going to read the books and continue to learn.  I am quite far from being a Photoshop queen, but I know that photography came to me with a purpose just as  writing this blog has.  It is a reminder to stop and reflect and see the goodness that surrounds me.  To have a record that this was the way life was, and this is the way it is unfolding.   On the road to finding peace and acceptance (my word this year) I am glad I have a way of training my mind to stop racing ahead and just accept what is.  To know that you don’t need something spectacular, that everyday life itself is exquisite.

Wordless Wednesday: An Education

hello today-i like you

 

 

 I liked today.

I knew going into it there would be no school and no work due to the snow.

The snow that I seem to like this year, who knew?

I liked having a lie in.

I liked tromping through it sometimes up to my hips.

I liked the way the cardinal feathers floated freely across the top skimming the crust.

I liked the way my body felt alive shoveling my grandparents sidewalk, warming me up so much that hat and gloves and almost coat came off.

I liked listening to my grandmother in her robe fussing at me to stop.

I liked hot homemade ham and bean soup for lunch.

I liked hours spent at the laptop working on a new idea I’m excited about.

I liked having this laptop.  I can work anywhere, my favorite perhaps my bed.

I liked drinking two and a half pots of tea a day.

I liked seeing real shadows falling across unmarked snow.

I liked seeing barn cats tenderly making their way.

I liked befuddled cattle not sure to brave the field, belly-deep in snow and buffalo that tear away and just go.

I liked an old husky dog that turns into a puppy outside.

I liked a boyfriend who called me at lunchtime just to hear my voice.

I liked little girls with pink cheeks and wild snowy hair.

I liked seeing little heads bobbing through the snow towards next door for a visit.

I liked knowing this day wasn’t planned so why not sit down to another cup of tea.

I liked listening to Ed and the girls Skyping on the computer and how he makes them giddy with laughter.

I liked reading the end of  The Wizard of Oz with Karelyn.

I liked a hot bath.

I liked clean, warm flannel sheets.

I liked Ed telling me eventually I will have to let him take care of me.

I liked how a good yoga routine and some deep breathing can help ease aches and pains.

I liked the quiet and the darkness.

I like life, on a day like this.

one word at a time.

 

 

This year I am vowing to take things a little slower.  ”slow” doesn’t seem to apply usually here unless you want to count trying to get Emily ready for school, that girl just works at her own pace.  But this year (among other things) I want to take things a bit at a time.

*****

when i am cooking dinner, i want to be just cooking dinner.

when i am reading bedtime stories, i want to be just reading bedtime stories.

when i make my evening call, i want to already be in bed, to turn off the light.

*****

I’ve been intent the last couple years on setting so many goals for myself which has been good, but this year my goals for myself are falling into three simple little categories which I’m not  going to elaborate on here because they are that self-explanatory and that low-stress.  I know without a shadow of a doubt I can accomplish these three things.

live. laugh. love.

 

There are other things I want to do too.  I want to work on my photographs more.  I want to write more.  I want to spend more time here online, but they are not the essentials.  These things are the essentials.  So when I go missing here for brief periods of time which I am hoping will not happen but somehow always does, know that I am busy on my list….living, laughing, loving.

I have worked so hard.  On myself and on my life.  Now I want to reap the benefits of the hard physical and emotional work I’ve done.  I’ve reached  another great goal and another favorite word of mine:

acceptance

This was the word I chose for my first self-portrait of 2011.  This was the word I chose when Shutter Sisters posted their One Word Project for this month, the first of 2011.  This is the word I think will finally define me this year and this was the word that made my dream come true landing a photo of my own on the Shutter Sisters site, a goal I’d been harboring for awhile and finally put out on “the list” last fall.

With three of my Mondo Beyondo dreams having found their way to me since September when  I posted them, I have found  it is best when I just allow them to reside here with me and find their own way to fruition.  They seem to do this best when I  let go of the controls and do another three words:

be. do. believe.

I will take this year one day at a time.  I will work on my photographs, one photo at a time and I will take all these beautiful words that have come into my life and I will write them, one word at a time, documenting this life I’ve been lucky enough to sculpt out of what I never thought was possible.

Onward and Upward.

I need to decide what to write.  I keep writing dribs and drabs here and there.  On the laptop.  On this computer, in a half a dozen random notebooks.  I have a memo I wrote on my cell phone in the morning when there was no paper handy. I send an email with writing in it every day Monday-Friday to my writing buddy.  I’ve always written best in short bursts.  Phrases, poems, little bits, but I want to collect them up, make some sense of them

I have pointed next year, 2011, as my year to focus on my writing and photography.

So far my unplanned, five-year plan could be summed up this way:

2007:  Cry, cry again, cry some more.  Feel sad and helpless, then go cry again.

2008:  Get the hell out of the marriage.

2009:  Recover from the divorce.  Get healthy and whole mentally.

2010:  Discover who I am.  Clean out house.  Lose 30 pounds.

So that’s it.  2011 will be the year of putting into action the things I identified this year that I feel driven and passionate about.

 

But I need organization.  I NEED organization, otherwise, I’ll continue to float around here all willy-nilly.  I would love to profess to be organized and I try.  I have calendars and lists, and spots for things, but really, when it comes down to it  “willy-nilly” may as well be my  middle name.  Because instead of doing those things on the calendar and the lists, I’m sitting here doing this AND it’s 8:26 p.m. AND I haven’t eaten AND I will end up staying up WAY TOO LATE again.

So….to organize.  My life seems to be on a pretty good trajectory right now.  There are still a few unknowns.  Oh hell, there’s a lot of big unknowns, so I need a guide, a map of sorts.   I did a VERY GOOD JOB (insert gold star here) of identifying what I wanted in my life this year, and surprisingly a lot of things have fallen into place.  Now I need to walk further down the path.

I think more than anything this year what I learned most was about loving myself, being grateful for what I have and not being afraid to reach for what I want.

I think next year.  I’m just going to stay focused on documenting it.

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: Easing Into the Self-Portrait

Life as I Know it.

 

You know that picture you have of  life in your head.  The dreamy one.  The one you read about on “other people’s blogs”.  Oh, if only I was a homeschooling, back to the land,  Julia Childish, yoga guruish, perfect husband, children, weather, chickens, make everything from scratch, sew my own clothes, never lose my temper, house always perfectly simple, organized, quaint and spot-free kind of thing.  That’s kind of the problem I have with the blog world sometimes.  Because in reality, none of us are all of those or even part of those things.  My favorite blogs are from “real” people because they are open, they are honest, they dialogue the good, bad and ugly.  Life can be beautiful and  messy, all at the same time.

It is Flickr, it seems, that has shown me so much more about documenting real life.  Doing 30 days of Gratitude this November has shown me how easy it is to document all these parts of life.  It’s also given me a new look at how much beauty, how much perfection there is in my life right now, just as it is.  The best part is it is much easier to grab one photo and a handful of words to sum up your day, and  flip through your Flickr contacts to see their visions of their lives through the lenses of their cameras.

Now I am a 365 dropout.  I didn’t make it past March this year taking a photo a day, so I cannot imagine (even though it is a nice thought and possibility) that I could continue a year’s worth of gratitude but I want to continue to make this daily connection with the positive in my life.  I want to continue this journey of loving my life just as it is and I am thankful for all the wonderful new contacts I’ve made there through this project.

This year has been a new path in my journey. A path of looking internally.  A path of self-acceptance.  A path that has led me to believe in myself and this life.  I don’t need to make comparisons anymore.  When I look at the things I have written, at the photos I have taken this year, they are deeply personal.  They are much more internal, much more reflective.

This is me, the way I am.  And as one of those real blog friends of mine would say, this is my life.

And I am proud of it.

 

 

 

Priorities

Here lie my two most important.  I know I have been gone from this space longer than usual.  I know I have been away from Little Bits for even longer.  I’m dreadfully sorry it’s been even longer since I made real blog rounds.  This past week I’ve been sorting out priorities.  It seems you only get so much time in a day (bummer, most days really) and I have tried what is a novel idea of doing the things that should be done prior to the little extras which means more time here in the real world.

My girls and I had a kick-ass night last night.  I mean one of those nights where you laugh so hard at dinner your daughter has to spit out her food so she doesn’t choke.  We have re-introduced the bedtime story, every drawer and cabinet in my kitchen was purged and organized last weekend, the animals bins have been emptied daily and the house looks less like a tornado has just blown through.

I started writing on the weekends, real writing that comes from my soul.  Writing that makes me proud.  I found a writing partner across the ocean and today we sent our first bits of writing off to each other.  When I get done here I will draft off Day 2 to send her tomorrow a.m.

I started 30 days of gratitude on Flickr.  Every day, a photo and a message of something I am grateful for.  I thought it would be fun. It ended up being something more for me.  It reminded me that I need to slow down and appreciate the fantastic things I have around me on a daily basis while they are here.  It reminded me that first and foremost I have to blog, I have to write, I have to photograph for me.

There is a limited amount of time, both in the day-to-day and during this lifetime so I have chosen carefully what I want to focus on.  I want to go out to dinner each month with my adult girls and drink wine and eat good food and laugh in a way I cannot do here at home.  I want to spend more nights wrapped up in a blanket with my little girls or out daring them to push themselves. I want to finally finish making this home the simple nest I’ve been envisioning now for two years. I want to go ahead and lay casually in bed and talk on the phone late at night like a teenage girl and find a new form for an old relationship.  I want to explore my writing and my photography in a way that does not elicit pressure.

I am remaining committed to this blog because it is as much home to me as everything else in my life.  I am putting Little Bits on the backburner because as much as I like it, I don’t love it enough.  I organized my blogroll so that when I have the time I can find  my friends and the places that provide  inspiration easily.

And that’s the whole of what I’ve been doing.