Pause

The fact that tomorrow is a new month AND the start of Lent gives me a great excuse to pause and blog. I’ve failed to post for over two weeks because, frankly, I’ve just been that busy. My husband and I actually had to forcefully block out Friday afternoon to spend time with one another.

But as I always say, being busy is a good thing — as long as you remember to take time to breathe. I’ve been trying to do that in the evening lately, putting the laptop away and saying, “Its okay if I don’t blog today. It’s okay if I don’t edit those photos today. I need to find peace.”

08/52 : Looking

And its helped. I’ve battled with a bit of anxiety for the last few months — I blame it squarely on the world today and the sheer overwhelming levels of negativity I keep experiencing online and in the real world.

I don’t deal with negativity well. At all. And as such I’ve found myself fighting with small panic attacks (that I’m quickly learning to work my way through), and my muscles and joints feel like I’m 80 years old with arthritis. I’ve self diagnosed it as stress-induced tension, and I’m still working on stopping that.

My goal for Lent is to really focus on being positive and more peaceful. Work hard to get the job done, but if it falls short of a deadline I’m not going to beat myself up so hard.

I am without a doubt my own biggest critic. As such, I’ve spent the last week and a half editing and re-editing photos I took for an event. I’m still not satisfied with them, but I realize they are as good as they will get. Will the client be happy? I hope so. I’ll send them off tonight after I look through them one final time.

Part of me keeps reminding myself that I am always — always — harder on myself than anyone else could ever be. Part of me realizes, though, this is a lesson learned that I need to upgrade my equipment to match the job I’m trying to do. My husband wouldn’t play a concert on a learner Casio. I can’t do professional jobs with a learner DSLR.

All this being said, this coming Sunday I’ll have a triple-sized Photo Share. But for now… I’ll pre-share a couple photos… and once again say its okay to pause, take a moment, take a breath, and then continue on…

Bradford Pear

Picnic by the lake