i took a break...

I am not sure why I took a break.

I am not even sure what I took a break from, or what I did on my 'break'.

but I definitely was gone a bit.

 

spring and summer were busy and we loved it. 

retirement was confusing but enjoyable.

 

 

September was more painful, for sure. 

September actually hurt. 

 

my brother in law moved in with us, which was rough on everyone. 

he didn't want to be here, we preferred our lives as they had been,

but he needed help and we all knew it.

 

 

my brother and his wife decided to move away, far away...

all the way from their maine/cape cod homes in the northeast USA to southern California.

it's good for them but sad for me...

they were a big part of our cape cod lifestyle

and we missed them long before they actually left.

 

it was a lonely time.

 

I have a hard time looking at the pictures I took because I was so profoundly lonely.

 

 

 

but October has been better.

my brother in law has found some housing back in NY where he wants to live.

my brother has moved on but I have traded sadness for gratitude.

I am lucky to have had a few years of hanging out together at the cape;

it's more than I would have had, if we hadn't bought a house at the cape too.

so my heart is healing.

 

 

joey and I have been able to spend some time enjoying autumn together.

we lost us-time in September and it felt like we lost everything.

but as leaves fall and the outside world changes,

so does our inside world.

and we will find a beauty in the new season too,

as long as we're together...

 

 

fragile but strong

 

last week, the announcement was made at work that i am retiring after 34 years.

the place that i grew up, the co-workers who became friends and family, the hard lessons learned, the many gifts received...

i was walking away, but leaving behind a lot of my life, my identity, my world.

but when it's not easy to go but even harder to stay, you know it's time.

as word got out, and it became more real,

i could feel the weight lifting off my shoulders.

my smile felt more sincere, my voice was sounding happier. i could hear it :)

 

then, on monday, joey's job unexpectedly came to an end.

he had been there 15 years and this was a way of life, an identity, for him too.

omg OMFG.

every plan that we had painstakingly put in place fell apart.

it was funny at first - how weird that the timing happened this way, chuckle chuckle

then we started envisioning how april -may, june, july etc- would go,

and we both got really scared. and really sad.

this truly was not our plan.

omg

OMFG

 

 

how could we do this? 

this meant we'd have to get health insurance?

we'd be selling the condo and moving to the cape?

what would we do together all day?

should i pull back the retirement, stay where there's security, an income, health insurance, a continuity of our current lifestyle, a daily routine...?

i think we both aged in the 24 hours that followed the announcement that his place of business was closing. 

he has a month from today until d-day.

i have until march 30. it is crazy.

 

 

we talked and we hugged. and slept. and thought.

and we cried a lot.  

and ultimately we made a new decision.

 

we are going to embrace this new world we've found ourselves in as a gift.

for the first time in the 33 yrs that we've lived together,

we will be unbound to 9-5 commitments.

we will need to find new routines. that's a good thing.

we may have less money to spend, but that too can be a good thing.

we never thought we'd be lucky enough to get to retire together.

many people don't get that option in life.

the plan we put together so meticulously didnt hold up long enough for me to even get to the first day of retirement. 

so, there's no plan this go-round.

this time, we just hold hands, and step off the edge, together.

 

fragile

but strong.

 

 

 

 

 

explore...

my word for 2013 is explore...

i am excited about it, it already has made an impact and it feels like it could make me stretch in a lot of different ways this year...

on friday morning, i went to the sunrise at the river like i do as often as i can.
i feel like i have photographed every bit of this little road along the river,
yet it calls me back day after day, season after season...

friday, i purposely 'explored' different angles,
and played with my macro lens.
i drove through the field instead of staying on the road, exploring a different section of the floodplain.  all in all, a great friday morning,
thanks to my new word...
 

 

 

 

then, on saturday morning, when i was driving to the river,

again the word 'explore' made its impact. 

i turned around and drove AWAY from the river,

and explored somewhere different for the sunrise.

i used to go to different places all the time but so fell in love with my secret river road that i've spent easily six months going there almost every day. 

by exploring some place different, two days in a row, i found beauty i was missing.

 thank you, my new word-for-2013,

you already are more than i could have hoped for...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some images were enhanced with snapseed, some with kim klassen's textures....

2 0 1 3

first morning...

first light...

2013

Connecticut River floodplain

enhanced with kim klassen's textures Providence and Now

where's the line

since 1979, i have written to myself to sort things out.

i had left my ex-husband and needed to figure out who i was, without his influence.

the theme of those years was clearly trying to find my own voice. 

i longed to be confident enough to live, as i called it, inside out. 

to let me be me, and to let go of approval seeking thinking.

did i ever get there? who knows.  but i don't care anymore so i think that's a good sign.  i am going to consider that as progress :)

the writings then seemed to turn to how to find a balance

between work and play, duty and adventure.  these were fun years. 

it wasn't an internal struggle for a voice, it was more of a constant quest for LIFE. 

the overwhelming need to appreciate the moment is evident in all the journals from my forties, into the fifties. i walked in the rain, rolled in the hay and played in the snow.  oh what a time it was.

and then, life moved on. my mother got sick and died.

all of the appreciation of the moment turned to fear of loss, longing for yesterday.

and bigger than all of that, how to go forward and

prepare for the end of my own life.  what would be my legacy? 

how would i live in my older years? would i be able to provide for myself? where would i want to be, who would i want to have been? 

 

these were feelings, not thoughts nor words. i didn't write in my journals.

i didn't read self help books. i didn't garden.

i worked. actually, i over-worked. 

and i took pictures. day and night.

i read blogs, i looked thru magazines, i watched hgtv.

i searched constantly.

for something, anything, everything.

for some reason, that gave me breathing room.  

 

as i think about it now, i think i was running.

running away, running towards...don't know.  

but subconsciously, i realized i needed to do, not think. 

however i'm not sure that i liked all the doing.

work pissed me off, at a level that it hadn't ever reached before. and that's because it felt like work was standing between me and LIFE.

 i wanted time to live my life. i wanted to own all of my minutes,

every freaking one of them. 

i knew at a deeper level that time was marching on.

giving away time - minutes, hours, days, weeks, years -

to work/lifetouch didn't sit well. they stole my minutes. so i stole minutes back.

i took pictures as i drove to work.

i took pictures at work.

i bought prop kits instead of setting goals,

i studied photography instead of sales results.  it worked for a while.

but now, today?  i am thinking no.

 

 

so now my writing, or my thoughts or my feelings, all end up at where's the line.

now i find i need to write about figuring out when is enough truly enough.

enough money in the bank to retire. enough years worked to retire.

enough trust in the future to say enough, and retire.

apparently, the key word is retire.

 

we bought our house at cape cod so we could live out our days there.

we thought it through - enfield had no draw for us except our jobs.

albany was home but it'd been 30 yrs since we lived there and

we weren't sure that it would be a joyful goal to go there. 

 it had a feeling of 'longing for yesterday' instead of living for today.

 

so cape cod was a great choice. it had a lifetime of history which gave it a feeling of 'home' along with a new twist - owning a house.  it did, however, add to list of to-dos. we DO more, instead of relax more. and this adds to the feeling of where is the line. where the hell are my minutes. i need more minutes.

 

i am an artist. i have been an artist since i was a kid.

i see things visually - from gardening, to photography, to hgtv.

i don't want to be a people manager. i don't want to be a sales manager.

i want to be - i AM - an artist.

 

so here i sit on a sunday morning, in late october.

ahead of me lies the crazy season at work when a 24 hr work day does not get the job done. and word is, this might be the busiest season ever.  yay.  just what i need.

but truth is, maybe this IS exactly what i need. 

a year that defines where that elusive line is.

where the commitment to work/lifetouch

clearly becomes more than i am willing to give.

the tug-of-war for my minutes and the confusion on where to draw the line is already taking a toll. i think that there's a break-through on the horizon.

and that makes me smile

 

so, come on santa claus, do your thing.

bring it on.

i think you might have a gift for me this Christmas.

and i just may be ready for it :)

 

 

september colors...

a month of transitions...

 

 

 

 

 

summer's end...

where did the summer go?

 

i am sad,

as always,

to see it end. 

 

but i am going after fall

with a sense of urgency

to enjoy and appreciate every minute of it.

 

you might want to stay out of the way of all that :)

picture info - Truro, Cape Cod
                      enhanced with Kim Klassen's textures - jay, canvasback, ToBe, and her brush

hellooo...

i am hoping august is the month.

i've been on hold, waiting and wondering.  testing the waters occasionally but each little step forward proved to be a no-go.

the deal is that i am trying to emerge from an overdose... a photographic/deadline/hell-hole of my own making.

it appears that the photography chairman's award contest at work, combined with photo hunt word of the day on facebook, and texture tuesday, and beyond layers, and my own projects such as self portrait every day, put me over the acceptable levels of photography projects with due dates and/or deadlines.

i don't know exactly what happened, or even when it happened, but i lost the light for a bit over these past few months. 

i haven't figured out exactly how to go forward.  i miss posting stuff. i keep shooting and trying new stuff, with cameras and software etc.  but i am not sure i can trust myself to know my own boundaries yet.  i resist posting - on blogs, facebook, flickr, instagram - because i tend towards the all-or-nothing kind of mindset.

so i am letting go of a few things, lightening up on some others and looking for a better balance.  i need some down time.

work is and has always been way too intense.  part of the lure of the photographic/deadline/hell-hole of my own making that i found myself in was an attempt to balance out the insanity of work with intensity of play.  and that actually worked for a couple of years, adding a whole lot of happiness to my life.  and then something went wrong.

work is still way too crazy.  i am working hard at letting go of some of that 'crazy' because i recognize that lots of that is self inflicted too, and there is a way to work smarter, not harder. (and truthfully, if my little plan for that doesn't work, at least i will get the '...not harder' part of the deal. which at this point, is good enough for me).

the play, on the other hand, is still a bit of mystery. not sure yet how to recognize 'too much.'
so i start with a post here, a finished assignment there and hope it feeds me that right amount of inspiration to bring me back from the edge of crazy.

awwww little blog, and little world of shooting-every-minute-all-for-the-fun-of-it, how i have missed you!! 

yes, august just might be the month :)

dreams...

a house by the sea...

she sits contentedly,

and waits for someone

to love her back to life...

image enhanced with kim klassen's texture "friday"...

double the fun

so this week has been intense...
it started out with the challenge to take self portraits on the beyond layers course with kim klassen.
 

my twin sister and i have done

the hold-the-camera out in front of ourselves

for the past few years

 and have loved having the pics to look back at.

so i thought this would not only be fun,

but a great project to do for a year. 

i called my sister, marilyn, and we decided that

we'd each do it individually for 365 days. 

it was a big commitment for each of us but it felt right.

we're 57 yrs old and looking for what we're calling 'fulfillment over fifty' and this seemed like a great starting point.  who are we, at 57? 

day 1 was a good time - we both liked it alot. we sent images back and forth through the beauty of cell phones.  fun stuff :)

day 2 was still ok -

the project seemed do-able, the pics were still fun...

i created a new blog to keep track of it all. 

and i was looking forward to day 3...

day 3 was a horror story. 
we both started to realize we have gotten older. 
good grief, we may even have gotten freaking old. 
and that f-word is the cleaned-up freaking (again, cleaned-up...) version. 
no amount of blurriness, or over-exposure was going to hide the fact, from myself anyway...
day 3 hurt.
 neither one of us was ready to give up the project but i can say that body parts other than my freaking (yes, again...) face were going to be center stage all year long.

day 4, i was wiser. 

feet do not look old,

when they are covered with shoes...

and i actually love this picture. 

day 5 was Friday. 

Friday the 13th.  i had concerns. 

my self-esteem was shaky.   i didn't want to feel like i looked old anymore. 

on the other hand, i can't take pictures of my feet all year.  and i really wanted the year to be a learning experience, showing me to myself, finding out who i have grown into.  

i had taken more than 100 pictures of myself this week. 

some i liked, some i hated but i did learn stuff. 

i learned like to walk.  and i need to get a haircut. 

and i can hide the belly fat at this time of year.

all good things to know... 

so i went for another walk at the river to find a good picture for how i was feeling... 

i wandered the roads and pathways, looking for something that would speak to me. nothing seemed meaningful. as i turned around to walk back to the car, thinking i would go home and take a picture of my hands with a beer in each one of them, i walked into the fading light of the day.  and all of a sudden, it seemed perfect.  utterly perfect. 

me, from behind, walking into the light...  

it felt like a picture of what i want to get out of this year. 

i loved it. 

i went home and drank the two beers, in honor of my breakthrough :)

and then, one last picture, to finish the week of painful growth...

 enhanced with kim's textures and brush.

thank you for the week of wisdom. i think :)

me myself i...

who i am today...

i set the self-timer, but didn't focus correctly. 

for today, i think it works :)  

 matter of fact, i just might go through the entire week without my glasses

so everything is soft-focus. 

i like it :)

coming undone...

today i am taking back my life. 

i have been running straight out, no let-up, for the last few weeks.   actually its been a few months. i don't like living this way - i wake up in the morning (and in the middle of the night), wondering what i didn't get done. and wondering how to get it all done, how to catch up, so i can stop feeling this way...
i am exhausted.

work has been frenzied and that always turns me into a workaholic.  and the work is never done so the feeling of accomplishment is only a dream.  it hangs in front of me, keeping me striving, but i never reach the finish line.  as soon as i close in on it, it moves.

so at some point on friday afternoon, when i felt myself trying to drive fast enough to go back in time and was oh-so-close to tears, i reached a BIG low point. despite all my efforts, all my multi-tasking, i was still not catching up.  earlier, i had taken a conference call on speaker phone on mute while taking a shower in an effort to get it all done.  i'd worked almost 60 hrs and still missed a deadline.  there just was not enough time in the day to get it all done.

and that was exactly what i needed to remember.  there simply was not enough time to do it all.
i hadn't failed to figure out how to get it all done; there was too much to do.  it didn't mean i had to take a shower while listening to 11 people on the phone.  it meant i need to cut down on my To-Do list. it meant i needed to make different choices.  i needed to run my life instead of letting my life run me...

and i needed to accept that it wasn't all going to get done. 

this morning at 5am i woke up.  i felt the whirlwind starting in my head... ok, what's the list of things to do this morning blahblahblah. 
and all of a sudden, i sat straight up and said bullshit. 
this is not the way TODAY is going to go.
i am going to relax.  i am going to enjoy myself.
the feeling of control likely won't last but for this moment, i am drawing a line right here this saturday morning. 

and for this moment, i am choosing to let go of the endless list and just stop. 
what isn't done is going to stay that way.

today, i am coming U N D O N E ...  :)

fragile beauty...

back in late October, we got clobbered with 14 inches of snow.

because the trees still had leaves, the weight of the snow was devastating...

four months later, there are still broken trees everywhere you look.

i'm worried that this very strange winter is going to take a second toll on the damaged trees -

they're looking like they think it's late march, not mid-february and they're starting to show buds...

the magnolia tree in our front yard took a major hit and lost multiple branches.

it doesn't have a beautiful shape anymore, it's lopsided and funky...

and yet,

the little tree makes my heart smile :)

there she is, showing us all what true beauty and strength looks like.

as she bravely puts forth her buds,
i can hear her say...
"i am stronger than you think"

she gives me

hope,

strength

and faith...

i love this little lady

enhanced with kim klassen's shine texture