i want to start this off by saying i had a beautiful lovely wonderful weekend until screeeeeeeeeeeeech sunday when it all went awry and this will be a bit of a whiny post but sometimes its okay to whine.
this weekend was duke’s birthday and it was lovely, we broke in our new kitchen aid beautiful appliance and made a sour cream chocolate cake which was yummalicious and oh so much fun to make. we had giggles filming a little bubble blowing fun and we hung out in the garden soaking up the sun and watching the bees flit about. perfection.
and then on sunday morning as i was jauntily walking to the pool, i fell. i would like to say that i tripped over a big brick left out or someone’s garden hose or the curb but i didn’t, i just fell. and my ankle buckled under me and i scrapped up my knee and elbow and my dignity by falling. but then i couldn’t get up because my ankle was twisted underneath me and after sitting and wiping off the blood and dirt i eventually pulled myself up and hobbled along.
i spent most of the day in pain with my ankle up alternating hot and cold while i got more and more depressed and upset with myself because i’m not going to be able to run or bike or do pretty much anything for a while not to mention i really need this to heal quickly because i have photoshoots and a wedding coming up. so yeah. i was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself and took the day off work because i was in so much pain and just wanting to be like the me in the photo above, standing on a chair and being goofy. but i can’t even put weight on my foot right now.
so i was sitting here feeling sorry for myself when a dear friend called and cheered me up and i thought isn’t it amazing that a conversation with someone who lives hundreds and hundreds of miles away can bring me back to the bright side of my life. and give me hope. to have someone who really understands how devastated i was feeling about this somehow reminded me that this will pass and i will eventually heal and maybe slowing down for a little while won’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me.
and i can even giggle about the fact that my clumsy ways are really going to be a problem as i age and i might need to bubblewrap parts of my body before i go out because i am so going to be the little old lady who falls and breaks her hip and has to crawl through the daisies to get help … honestly, i just fell and have no idea how it even happened and i would like to say that this was the first time but um not even close.
and just because … sometimes bukowski makes me smile …
i am in a strange place with this blog, with my life. transitions can lead us from a tiny bud to a blossoming beauty but they tend to mix things up a bit in terms of regular routines and life ambitions.
the beautiful stacy has been talking about dreams and unlocking your dreams and taking those tiny steps towards fulfilling them. anyone who knows me knows that i am a big believer of dreams and i have spent most of my life dreaming my dreams and moving slowly towards them. sometimes the universe rocks us and takes those dreams away from us and sometimes the universe rocks us and gives us our dreams. at the end of the day, we only have control over so much but we always always always have control over how we respond and to whether we continue to weave our dreams and move forward in our lives.
as many of you know, i recently made some pretty important steps towards fulfilling one of my dreams and i put out into the universe that i was going to quit my job in 2010. i have been shooting weddings and i have an inbox filled with potential opportunity and i have also talked about how much i love it and i do. i love capturing love and all the beauty that surrounds a wedding day.
the thing is, i have realized that i love a lot of things. i love my life, my family, my friends. i love painting and doodling. i love reading. i love writing. i love gardening. i love poetry. i love shooting photos for no reason than to just be in that moment of seeing. i love music and laughter. i love running and cycling and swimming. i love pushing my body until my muscles ache and i am a sweaty pool of pain.
i like getting there in my own rambling way.
on saturday i ran my first race of what will be many. it was a 5k and my son ran it with me because he’s proud of me and wanted to support me. i am 40 and he is 14. i have never been a runner and i was extremely out of shape and overweight when i started training 2 months ago. he didn’t put any training in. so you know how this ends. i ran it in around 40 minutes and he ran it in 23. i was so proud of him. i was so proud of me. it was exhilerating to be a part of the 13,000 some people who participated in this event. i’m not going to kid you, it was hard and i was a sweaty pool for most of it but i found my rhthym and i didn’t stop and i was happy to see cups of water at the top of the hill just past the halfway mark. near the end, i found a burst of something and powered through across the finish line where the first thing i saw was my husband with his camera. his arms opened up for me and tears welled as he told me how proud he was of me and then i saw my mom and dad and son and my running room buddies and it was hugging and joyfullness all around.
there are a couple of points to this story. the first is that i am 40 and it is about time i recognize how hard i work and have worked to get where i am. i have an amazing career that can be both frustrating and beautiful but its a worthwhile career that actually helps people. i don’t talk about it here because um, hello first rule of thumb of blogging is not to talk about your work. duh. i have invested 10 years into a darn good pension and do i really want to give it all up? i have actually been really enjoying my work lately and have worked through some pretty significant personal goals here. i have run my own little personal work run and have come through it feeling pretty darn proud of myself. its true.
if i was 14 or hell even 24, possibly even 34, i would so go for it. i would build the business and quit my job and live my life as a photographer. but. i’m not 14 or hell even 24 and i really don’t want to be. i love shooting weddings and i love providing my clients with their photographs but its hard work, really hard work. its hard work that i love but realistically in order to get the business where it would have to be in order for me to quit my job means working 24/7 and i am not willing to do that. ideally, i would love to shoot 1 or possibly 2 weddings a year with people that i adore which is how it has been so far and that makes me a lucky lucky girl. we have been lucky to have amazing clients who we fall in love with which makes the work so very easy and i want to keep it that way.
the second point to my story is that i love where i am at and i don’t want to miss any of it. i don’t want to miss my son’s life or time with my husband or personal goals like a 10k, a half marathon, a full marathon, a sprinter triathlon, hell even an ironman. i want to live that dream. and voice lessons and drum lessons and playing my guitar and maybe even crossing the hurdle of letting someone outside of my family hear me sing. i want to live that dream. finishing my novel. publishing more of my poetry. writing it all out. i want to live that dream. turning that mess of a yard that we moved into a few years ago into a garden paradise, yeah baby, i want to live that dream.
the thing is my career, my job is such that allows me the time and ahem the money to live a lot of dreams but the work involved in starting a wedding photography business and making it my living leaves me no time for my family never mind all the other things i love like walking home from the pool in late spring and watching the cherry trees come to life and seeing that little blue egg cracked open and marveling at the tiny chirps of life. i will continue shooting weddings because i love it but am going to hold on to my pension and my job and enjoy it, really enjoy the work that i do, the people that i work with. its really a pretty good life.
maybe what i’m trying to say is that dreaming is amazing and my dreams took me out of my little oil town and found me pursuing two degrees which gave me so much happiness. my dreams led me to a husband, a best friend who fully supports me in everything that i do while still giving me butterflies in the pit of my stomach. my dreams led me to gallery shows of my photography and poetry readings and publications. my dreams led me to the opportunity to photograph families and love and to know that i have provided them with memories and love and beauty. my dreams gave me a son who talks to me and supports me and fills my heart with so much joy. my dreams led me to owning a beautiful little cottage in a magical neighbourhood with big elm trees and friendly neighbours and a home filled with colour and love and art and music.
and so you see, at some point, i think sometimes i have gotten so caught up in my future dreams that i have forgotten that i am actually living my dream. right here. right now. and i want to enjoy it. i am actually living the life i used to sit under lilac trees and hope for. its here. right here. with tears in my eyes, i can honestly say that in this moment i have everything i ever wanted, i have everything i need and that makes me so incredibly grateful and damn lucky to boot.
*i wrote this all in a mad rush so i hope this makes sense. i will continue dreaming and continue moving towards personal goals but i realized that the path i am currently on is the path i want to be on and that is wonderful to realize.
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” (maria robinson)
all my life i have heard stories about how people have just let go of everything and started fresh, a new, from a different perspective. people who have taken the pile of journals that scatter on my shelves, in boxes filled with childhood scrawl and heaped them high and set them aflame with fire. cleared away. i know people who have wiped their blogs clean and started fresh deleting the archives. i even follow a flickr artist who had a history of beautiful photos and then one day started fresh, wiped the slate clean and began anew, he continues to do so.
maybe there is something beautiful in the transient nature of destruction. maybe by not attaching ourselves to stongly to our work, our thoughts, our words … we are somehow more free to change and grow and continue moving forward. i don’t know. i don’t have an answer only questions piled upon questions. i do know that for me the thought of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh, the thought of erasing all my previous words and thoughts, photographs and canvas soaked through with paint feels as though i would have the space to move forward, the space to breathe and create with new vision.
but then. because there is always another side. i like to document, to look back, to see how far i’ve come and its all there for me to dip myself into the past in order to see the future.
i used to write myself letters and would date them for another time, i didn’t necessarily write about where i was but rather wrote about where i wanted to be by the time the letter was opened. i wrote letters to my future self with the hope that i would somehow magically time travel to this new brave world of me. its not so odd to me that when i found those letters in a box, i could see where i was when i wrote them and i could see that i was indeed where i wanted to be.
i still write letters, only know i do it electronically, first through future me and now through photojojo’s time capsule which brings you a sampling of your photos from the past (via flickr) and then gives you the opportunity to write to your future self.
the thing is. i am right here, right now. living in this moment but a part of me is back there and a part of me is somewhere out there. i can’t change the past but i can change the future and my actions right now are relevant. oh so relevant. this is likely why i won’t ever clear the slate and start fresh. i value each and every one of my actions from the past, they taught me so much, they still teach me lessons and when i am feeling lost, they tell me stories and help me search for me.
i am in a place where i need to write a letter. this letter is an important letter and i am going to use pretty stationary and i am going to sit down, alone and connect to a very special person. i am going to tell her the story of my heart and how much i love her and how much i want for her. i am going to seal it in a pretty envelope and i might even put a special polaroid photograph in it for her. i am going to date it and mail it and when she receives it, i know she will put it in a special place until it comes time for her to open it and read my words. i know when that time comes she will be joyous and she will smile and she will likely shed a tear for me because she is emotional like that.
i am holding her future in my hands and am thankful that i love her enough to ensure her future is beautiful.
“Have you got any soul?” a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I’ve got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can’t seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn’t be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.” (nick hornby)
Yesterday, I woke up to the noise of my radio loud and jarring as the dark night air strung a line of moonbeams across the white duvet pillow softness of sleep. I have been tired deep into my bones these days, eyes fluttering in annoyance, I didn’t have the energy to cut off the voices, tin can dancing sounds from the box on the other side of the bed. He asked her “do you know when the most depressing week of the year is?” I groaned. She said, “Sometime in January”. I groaned again and listened to them talk about calculations and this and that and a U.K psychologist and apparently, the third week in January is the most depressing week of the year. Needless to say, I was not surprised. Not one bit.
Its been a week of complete inbalance. Tired, aching bones and a tiredness in my head, foggy and grey, that I can’t seem to shake. Coffeeshop blues indeed. It has been unseasonably warm here but this week, temperatures are supposed to go back to normal with a bleak dive back down into the cold of -30s (-20s for you fahrenheit people). I am trying to shake myself out of this feeling but nothing is working, not even going to the pool or doing yoga. So I resort to chocolate but its like the exercise, a quick fix that doesn’t really get me any where. I know this won’t last and I am taking a week long vacation to the coastline of Vancouver for a week in the near future and am sure that will give me the breathe of freshness I so need.
The thing is … there is another worry on my mind. A pretty big worry and I’m just not ready to talk about it here. Suffice it to so, it is not helping with these blues that I have somehow acquired. I wanted to come here and write something light and airy and inspiring but honestly I am just not in that place so instead I come here authentically to say that in this moment, I am pretty much a mess. A mess of emotions and hormones and missing the light … I really need a pick me up of something beautiful because …
As I was writing this, I got interrupted by the telephone and then a bunch of work stuff. In the midst of all that, something beautiful happened. Something incredibly beautiful. Something that thrills me beyond belief and just may have the ability to shake me out of this funk. The worry will still be there but that is something I have no control over and what is will be I suppose but enough about my cryptic ramblings.
The happy beautiful news is that our Canon 5D Mark II camera is in !! We are picking her up tonight and that just makes me want to dance and dance and then dance some more. And in time to play with before our next wedding shoot in February. Wheeeeeeeeeeee
Incidentally, January 24th is apparently the most depressing DAY of the year. Its a Saturday so at least I can hibernate if need be.
“Our society’s strong emphasis on dieting and self-image can sometimes lead to eating disorders. We know that more than 5 million Americans suffer from eating disorders, most of them young women.” (tipper gore)
when i was about twelve, i became anorexic and started starving my already slender body. i got a rush from the lightheadedness that comes from starvation and my already distorted view of my body and food portions became even more distorted. i was kicked off my swim team that season and my parents sat with me for hours after i had eaten the (large - me / tiny -actual) dinner that they forced me to sit and eat every night. this started a pattern that would stay with me for more years than i care to admit.
i still have problems with how i see myself and can tell you that i felt incredibly overweight a few years ago when i gained about 20 pounds after i quit smoking. um. that was 40 more pounds ago. when i became pregnant with my twin babies, i ended up on bed rest for months on end and not only did i steadily gain weight but i lost a whole lot of muscle and then when they died, i gained even more weight as grief took over and i hid myself behind layers of pain.
its interesting to me that back when i was thin, i looked in the mirror and felt that i looked fat. i realize now that it is likely because i have always been a curvy girl, even at my skinniest rib sticking out phases. i have hips and super wide shoulders and due to years of swimming, thighs that have always been on the large side of things. i look back at the few old photos that i allowed of myself and see the poor girl who didn’t even realize how beautiful she was. it makes me sad even now when i photograph beautiful young girls who don’t realize how incredibly beautiful they are. the insecurities we carry around blow my mind sometimes.
so these days, i am a bigger version of myself with much the same shape with the exception of the weird twin byproduct skin on my lower stomach. there are not enough sit ups in the world people, hah! i want to be honest about this ~ over the past two years, i have gone through a cycle of abuse towards myself that brings tears to my eyes. i have tried every diet and exercise program there is and no change. i biked to work everyday for months on end. no change. i did everything but starve myself because honestly i don’t have that kind of self loathing at all and refuse to go there again even though i know it would be the one thing that would ultimately work. i am trying to be healthy.
i want to be healthy and part of being healthy is being gentle and good with myself. so, i recently had a battery of tests because diabetes runs in my family and being overweight can bring it on. i was worried about my thyroid because honestly i have tried a lot of weight loss programs and with each and every one of them, duke lost weight, i didn’t. i really had to stop with the dieting because i am scared that my beautiful man will just get too skinny (it pays to have a sense of humor about these things). anyway, i got a completely clear bill of health. my physician says that i couldn’t be healthier if i tried and the only reason i could possibly have to lose weight at this point would be for vanity reasons.
hmmm.
vanity reasons. i would love to be the kind of person who really is that comfortable with themselves that vanity reasons don’t play into the equation at all. and then i had that definitive ‘ah-ha’ moment about the whole thing. the way i looked outside never did make me feel better on the inside. i remember a period in my life when i couldn’t walk down the street without getting hit on by some guy or another and i never felt comfortable in my skin at all, actually i remember feeling a bit alienated as if people could see right through me only noticing the parts that weren’t really me, fixating on my supposed beauty instead of me. and the thing is, lately, i have been feeling so absolutely fantastic about me and who i am and who i am growing into. i feel like i am growing into me, the person that i always knew was in there. i feel beautiful most days and i feel light and bouncy and twirly and then sometimes i catch a glimpse of myself in a full length mirror or i see a photo of me that duke thinks is beautiful and i recoil in horror. is that me? i don’t feel like that is me.
when i was beautiful i felt disconnected from the me that was a mess inside
i feel beautiful inside and now i feel disconnected from the me on the outside
screw that !!
i am determined to embrace who i am right now and that includes the weight that i am right now. my husband thinks i am beautiful and my friends see my beauty and the size of my clothing shouldn’t have an impact on that beauty. its me. i need to see properly, i need to change my self-image and enjoy who i am right now. i am tired of all the negative self image talk that i do to myself and the beating myself up over something that i had very little self-control over.
control. see that is the thing. i overcame my anorexic problems years ago by recognizing that it was a control issue for me. my pregnancy and the loss were all things out of my control and this emotional upheavel played a huge part in my negative self talk towards my body. maybe it is the last vestiges of grief but i realize that it is something that i need to finally let go of. i had no control over what happened but i do have control over how i have dealt with it and how i continue to deal with it. i have control over how i choose to see myself and how i choose to love myself. if i could look in the mirror 60 pounds ago and see someone who was grossly overweight than perhaps i can look in the mirror now and see someone who is beautiful. you think? its part of why i started doing self portraiture again. i need to challenge myself on this, it is important to my inner growth i think. i have overcome so much in this life but this is a challenge that i need to put some attention on. it is time.
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely” (carl gustav jung)
i have accepted so many parts of myself so completely, i am ready to accept the rest.
“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” (henry david thoreau)
This morning’s bike ride into work was cold, frosty and uncomfortable. Even with gloves and a fleece headwrap over my ears, it took me forever to warm up once I got into the office. I longed instead to be wrapped up in a long sweater, leather wrapped calves and the clicking of boots with a scarf wrapped around my neck.
I cannot deny the fact that it feels like Autumn and big yellow leaves litter our street, our front yard even as I taste the fruit that I grew over the summer, fresh juice dribbled down my chin as my fridge fills with cucumbers, juicy sweet tomatoes, squash, carrots and beets. Bags of freshly picked apples wait for me to peel and cook and freeze and the ever emerging darkness starts to bring a different light to the world that I live in.
The seasons dictate how I live, what I do, my emotions strung into a line of yearly ritual in this land of extremes where my heart dwells. It was only a couple of weeks ago, when I couldn’t find escape from the relentless heat, highs hitting the high thirties (nineties for those on fahrenheit) and now I check the weather ever night to see if I have to cover my roses, my tomatoes because the frozen waver of a frost sits quietly in the air.
My son started school today and I feel myself dreaming of warm fires and pumpkin eyes glittering, walks through corn mazes and leaves crunching as my eyes seek out the brightest leaf in a valley that will soon be covered in hues of orange and yellow as green winks good-bye.
I find myself suddenly tired, weekends of activity and late nights processing photos, droopy eyed and in need of a rest, I actually contemplated taking a blog break but realized that likely a nap would suffice. I suspect that early evening will find me snuggled into the aroma of vanilla scented sheets as I wrap up into a cocoon of sleep, hopeful that I will soon awake from this slumbering dream to find myself rejuvinated by the crisp air of this decaying season, strangely filled with life as my world prepares for a sheet of white sleep.
There’s a lot of stuff going on in my head right now. Some of it beautiful and wishful and dreamy and some of it piled high like garbage and some of it just observations. I feel the need to do a brain dump and while I could dump it into a leather encased journal, I need the satisfaction of the clicking of the keys. I am thinking a list, a random bit of a list which will fly from my fingers and I will not think about to much.
1. Our city is filled with garbage. It makes me want to cry and rant and wail. The snow has melted to reveal piles of garbage everywhere, up against shrubs, in the streets, lingering in potholes, floating down the river, hung high like an ornament in trees, resting lightly on grass, in piles on sidewalks and yards and along freeway ditches. Is it because we have garbage cans littered about the city with no lids on them so the wind picks up the garbage and dances it down the street? Or is it because people don’t care and throw their leftovers out of car windows as they zip along in their gas guzzlers merrily humming along on their way to their homes or dreaming of the province they came from and resentful of the fact that the money and the work is here? I don’t really know. I suspect there are a lot of reasons for the garbage and today on my way out of the house, I stuffed some bags into my bag and as I am outside, I pick up a bit here and there in the hopes that others will care enough to do the same. This is where we live people, have some respect for where you lay your weary head.
2. Blogging. I just don’t know where I stand on it these days. I have read some pretty compelling blog posts over the past month that make me wonder what I am doing here. I mean I love it, it is a part of my life but does it interfere too much with the real life outside of computer screen? These are the questions I am asking myself. I have never been one to follow the trends, to buy the latest fashions, to listen to the music that everyone else was listening to. I have always thought it was important to make my own decisions and follow my own instincts and I have always been fairly successful in this but recently I am wondering? I love the very real friendships that I have made with a few people whom I can count on my fingers and I love the friendships that I can see with a few others that I can count on the rest of my fingers and one thing that I notice with these is that we are different and we sometimes have differing opinions, interests, passions and that is so wonderful and okay and normal for me.
But.
I also notice that I have found myself being influenced by more popular crowds and that feels a bit gag worthy to me because I have noticed that some of this influence is incredibly mainstream and commercialized and against everything I have always believed in. I don’t want to be like you any more than you want to be like me. It is our diversity that makes us interesting or so I have always found though it is our understanding and compassion that makes us beautiful. A slight difference which I need to explore more. It is nobodys fault but my own that I find myself in this state where I am wondering if I like something because I like it or if I like something because somebody else does. I also wonder how it influences my art, am I listening to others or to the sound of my own rhythms, my own expressions, my own unique view. I want my art to come from me and not from someone else but influences are also really good because they help to shape what it is that we like and what we don’t and how we fit into it all. Confused? Yeah, me too. I will figure it out and maybe all it means is refreshing my feed reader, a little spring cleaning is always good for the soul.
which leads me to my next thought on blogging.
Influence aside, is blogging taking up too much of my precious time? I would say that at one time, it was so mangeable because it was anywhere from 5 minutes to 1/2 hour of my time which included writing a post and reading a few others. But its different now because I know too many bloggers, I read to many bloggers so while my posting time is minimal (I type like a demon ~ thanks for making me take that typing class mom), my reading and commenting time, my email responding time and my general thinking time has increased exponentially. Its a lot to fit into a life that includes working full time at my cube job; working full time at getting my business going which includes business seminars and business planning and contract development (and and and); my son’s soccer and basketball, homework and general hanging out family life; my husband’s rehearsals and gigs and coordinating it all with all our activities as well as a regular exercise routine, housework and gardening and um mundane things like cooking everyday and budget planning. whew. Just writing it out is daunting and that is before the creative passion stuff like my writing, my poetry, my art photography, my painting and collaging, my jewelry making and my little etsy store. Am I crazy? When do I sleep? These are questions that keep me up at night.
My life is demanding and on the one hand my blog is an outlet from all that busy but on the other hand could it be a procrastination, a way of hiding which is really funny since its public and all but I think we can hide in the public sphere as easily as we can in the dark of a room. I am not talking about quitting blogging here because after five years, clearly I am invested and clearly I love it *hello* I’m typing it out here afterall. I think I am talking about re-evaluating how I view it. I don’t know. Its all going to take more thought.
3. Death. April is a big death month for which is why the poetry is super helpful. I lost my sister in April and my two sons and so April tends to kick my ass a bit. While April is green flowered blossom beauty in most parts of the world, here it is all about the death. Oh sure, there are teeny buds beginning to show themselves on the trees and in amongst the straw, there are shades of green growth but the flowers and the blossoms and the leaves don’t really come out to play until May and June. Typically it is not frost free here until the May long weekend which is three weeks into May. So with the memories of death and the sight of it all around me waiting for clean up well lets just say its hard to maintain a vibrant happy attitude. I’m trying. Death is awkward and final and I suppose May reminds me that it is also cyclic and I have that to look forward to which is good. Meanwhile the river ice is gone and the water flows and I feel some hope watching it drift by.
I have more but writing this all down has left me weary and somewhat refreshed. I am surprised by the refreshed part. Somewhat. I suppose this is the goodness of blogging and partly why I continue to do it.
