Today (With Wintry Images from My Travels over the Past Month)

JANUARY 01, 2016 IN GENERAL

“It is 2016, but your life may not feel very different in any way just yet…but your life could change dramatically.” Capricorn horoscope for today

In my last post I noted how difficult it’s been for me to write. Again, I’ve started this post and stopped several times. I’ve shot photos and scrapped them. I usually post to Instagram nearly every day, though, thanks to a daily photo challenge. But I’ve been thinking about this blog.

Today, as I type, I’m thinking that I should be outside walking. The sun has come out, and fresh cool air would do me good. I should also be making lasagna with the vegetables I purchased earlier this week—that really has to be done. I’m finishing laundry, and still need to finish taking carpet staples out of the hardwood floor in the bedroom. And Zsa Zsa is overdue for a bath. 

This blog, to me, has always been a personal outlet, and maybe that is the issue. For the past few months I’ve been scattered, distracted, on the edge, trying to develop a new business, leaving the known for the unknown, struggling to get settled in this house. Progress is slower than expected. I’m worried and sad and excited. As my old life slips away, I feel unprepared for the new, yet I push ahead. As much as I used to love the holidays, I now dread the isolation of December. What I’m feeling defies description at any given moment. But I put up a good façade. 

A recent conversation with a friend who paid me the nicest compliment I’ve ever received and a heart-wrenching Facebook post by another whose friend just committed suicide made me pause. From different directions and in different ways, the same message I got from each of them was that you never know what someone is thinking. We are all islands—with all due respect to John Donne—connected really by the water between us, whether ebbing back and forth or flowing past. Our energy draws us together, but it may or may not be strong enough to keep us that way. 

This New Year brings release of old patterns and relationships and memories that are hurtful or that have run their course. All I can do is focus long enough to welcome new opportunities, new connections, new waters and new inspiration, and hopefully a cushion for next December’s blows.

Snow Day

JANUARY 27, 2015 IN GENERAL

I’m not a fan of winter, at least the cold, snowy kind of winter.  I have always sort of hibernated during January. It’s such a dark month, the one glimmer of hope being that the daylight grows steadily longer.

Last January was brutal with below-zero temps and lots of snow blowing around. I have to say we’ve been lucky this year, and the snow has been minimal with short cold snaps. In Rochester I would listen in the middle of the night for the snow plow, and I find myself waking here, too, to the scraping as it comes up the hill. When it comes. This is not the city. When I don’t hear traffic going by in the early morning I know the road is covered.

But Winter found us at last, and we’ve had about six or so inches over the last three days. This is okay. While I can’t embrace the weather, I am resigned to accept it as it is. And I even made time to shoot a few photos on my way to the office today because, without the wind, the snow has settled on the trees, and it’s very pretty.  

I’m still working on my new websites, and, with any luck will have one up and running in the next two weeks.  It’s exciting to be working on a couple of new art projects, too, and preparing a new photo class. Off and running for 2015.