love...hate?

i have had a love/hate relationship with fall over the years.

it is a time of glorious but fading beauty 

and it makes me tense, to some degree...

i feel pressured to appreciate it all before it goes away.  

nature can be a tough teacher...

time and time again, it makes me understand and appreciate THIS moment...

today. 

right now.

i don't want to miss a thing...

and at the end of the day,

i learn again, deep down in my soul,

that even though this too shall pass,

the wonder that is winter 

has a beauty all it's own.

and that, too, shall pass...

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 :)

 

 

a note to self...

dear self,

you are going down that old familiar late-october path

to peak season hell in the portrait studio. 

you have gritted your teeth into pieces, literally. 

your head feels like it is swollen from too much activity. 

your back is already crippling you and its only mid-october.

your driving foot is in spasms and your stomach is joining your driving foot

in the dance of the stressed-out district manager body parts.

you are closing in on 60,

and your parts should not be put through this kind of pressure. 

they won't make it thru to the other side

without telltale signs of what you're doing to yourself. 

but because you're older,
you know more than you used to.
and that is adding even more stress.
this is the 33rd peak season
you've gone thru and you do know
what it takes to make it better. 
THAT is what is stressing you out.
let it go. 
look for sweet smiles, look for good stuff and look away from the stuff
that amps up the impulse to
fix-fix-fix before it's too late. 
there is no fix that can hold up totally, there is no fix that will make it all okay for everybody. 
let them learn their lessons, let them apply lessons from other years, & let the f#@k go.  got it?

now, today, this week...what will make that difference? 

more wandering, less conference calls? 

more conference calls, less wandering? 

 i am thinking less wandering and less conference calls. 

its time for a work-life balance readjustment. 

and today is the day. 

sweet sisters of stone...

i am in love with statues that i find in cemeteries...

 

 

 

 

i see vulnerability and strength...sweetness and sadness...

every time i find one,

i wonder about who they represent,

and about the  family

who's loss is soothed by these beautiful statues...

 

To the sweet sisters of stone -

may you always stand strong,

and may you forever rest in peace...

 

each image has been enhanced with kim klassen's textures



31 days...

november is coming...

the time of year where work takes over every minute. 

awake or asleep, there is no escape. 

so for the next 31 days, i plan to absorb, appreciate and

embrace AUTUMN...

 

I am going to enjoy the flowers while they are still here.

and i am going to watch nature in all its glory as the world turns to

orange and yellow and reds...

it's gonna be a blast :)

 

 

i am going to play with the pictures

in photoshop and snapseed and picmonkey and whatever else i can find...

and then, at the end of the month,

i am going to be all filled up with color :)

 

and that should help when it comes time

to face november...

 

 

 

bring it on,

october,

i am ready for you

 

 

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

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"...

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 ...  :)

day of the bloom....

work is always busy at this time of year and it starts to take over every waking moment... wednesday it all came to a head.

as bad as the day got, i think of it now as one of the best years of 2010 because i now know that i do not want to go through it again. and primarily, it was a result of my own choices...

on monday, i had found a bud on my mother's Christmas cactus, decided i was going to shoot it as it bloomed but then let work take over my life and lost the plan... then today, i went to shoot it and it already had bloomed, i almost missed it.

LESSONS - every day matters and when you check out for a day, you may miss a lot...don't let busyness get in the way of living...sometimes little things are really big things...

oldies but goodies

friday
march 26

today's word of the day was old. besides the obvious self-portrait, i was surrounded by old stuff. i went on a ride around town and thoroughly enjoyed celebrating OLD.

saturday's word

Time - not an easy thing to photograph. after a few failed attempts, i remembered a very old tree that i used to photograph at the connecticut river. every time i'd see it, i'd always think of all that this tree must have seen over time. so i drove to the river to shoot the tree.
then i saw the single grave along the riverside from 1700's and that seemed even more representative of TIME. such a beautiful place to spend eternity...