Reverb Prompt- One Word

"I won’t be so hard on me today
I start to take myself so seriously
Shouldn’t be so hard just to be effortlessly

I want to know
I want to breathe
I want to simplify my needs
I want to live inside this moment
And just be effortlessly
Just be"
(Sister Hazel)

One of the Reverb Prompts encourage readers to encapsulate 2010 with one word. That was easy for me. My word was "Effort." Some things seemed so much harder than they had to be. Other things were just hard because they were hard. Last year around Christmas is when UNO cut my program and I had to spend the first part of 2010 deciding where to go next. New areas of study had to be chosen, my major had to change, a completely different path than the one I had already spent so much time and effort on had to be taken.
I had to give up on every single grad school that I had chosen to apply to.
I had to accept the fact that I'd spent countless hours learning a language that had very nearly driven me crazy and I now had absolutely no use for.
To say this was hard is a HUGE understatement.

Then there was the twelve semester hour summer. The twenty one semester hour Fall. The new job. The new goals that required sometimes more effort than I thought I could manage. A couple of huge disappointments. A series of hurt feelings. Plus, there were the common everyday struggles of life on top of the extra struggles of getting my feet back under me after such a dasterdly rug pulling.
This year was hard.
This year required a tremendous amount of effort.
This year makes me tired just thinking about it.

This year I had to dig in with both my fingers and my knees while scaling some pretty daunting mountain sides.

But there was also so much good about this year. For one this year brought new friends that I cherish. It brought me a job that I love and I boss that I respect. It brought me new future goals that actually fit me better and make me happier than the original ones (and I NEVER have to study Russian grammar ever, ever, ever again). It brought me new surges of creativity. It brought productivity. I've completed a ton of semester hours and manged to keep a high GPA (3.78 thank you very much, 4.0 in my major). I've joined the History Honor's Society. I've started the work of developing a portfolio that I'm proud of. I've learned how to set up studio lighting. I gave a friend a portrait of her son that nearly made her cry.
This has been a good year.
This has been a great year.
This year makes me happy just thinking about it.

This year was photography class and Jessie and Alicia and Shelly and Alex.
This year was the SMH and Geoff.
This year was DC and Baltimore and Hannes and the best Indian food ever.
This year Murali left.
This year Philip left.
This year Kaylan moved away.
This year the Saint's won the Superbowl and we celebrated half the night in the Quarter.
This year was art museums with my youngest daughter.
This year was tough for me and my oldest daughter as we both struggled with her growing up.
This year was Cheryl Hayes.
This year was a super nerve wracking time with Richard Johnson who I only somewhat love and is the meanest mentor ever.
This year was class, and class, and class.
This year was Dr. Goss who has changed my academic life completely- for the better.
This year was Michael and I struggling with work loads and bosses and stress and responsibility and bills and laundry and willful cats but always working it out together.
This year was Amber Phillips.
This year we lost our chancellor and everyone at UNO was afraid and most still are.
This year Joe Caldwell died.
This year was The Tome, and Bible as Lit, Art History and Clarence Laughlin.
This year was migraines, the flu, allergies and more migraines.
This year was one Emergency Room (I love you Frannie) and two Critical Care trips.
This year was a drive-in movie in Virginia.
This year was my new camera that I worked so hard for and then was a piece of junk (stupid rave reviews) and so I worked so hard again and got another one that I adore.
This year was my mother and I finding balance.
This year was planting a garden just to have the whole damn thing die and then in October the pepper plants miraculously came back to life and won't stop making peppers.
This year was more "Dear Ganesha's" than I can count.
This year was learning that Rick Herrera had the power to smite people.
This year Ali had her twins.
This year I never got to see her because we kept missing one another.
This year was SueBear and Cemeteries and Fairy Juice and Austin.
This year was Johnathan and MATH.

This year was happy and hard and took a lot, a lot of effort.

The next part of the prompt is much harder. What word do I want to encapsulate the next year?

I think I'll answer that one tomorrow.

Reverb Prompt- 11 Things

I love the website Reverb10. I'll admit I haven't done a prompt a day, done them in order or completed very many of the prompts at all. But there was one that really inspired me. In the theme of preparing for the new year I loved the idea that this prompt wasn't "11 Things You Want to Accomplish," or "11 Things You Want To Do Differently," or "11 Resolutions," but simply "11 Things Your Life Does Not Need in 2011." Cleaning out is just as important, maybe even more important, than adding things in. So here goes, my 11 Things.

1. It does not need people that have let go of me. A one sided holding on will wear out even the most resilient soul. If they have let go, I will too. It’s hard when you have invested time, love, confidence in someone and they walk away. But it’s harder not to simply let them keep going.
2. It does not need guilt over goodies. If I want to eat a piece of pie, or some ice cream, or a chocolate bar- damn it I’m a grown up, I can eat whatever I want to. I’m not going to feel bad about it anymore.
3. My life does not need to be stocked to overflowing. It’s time to do less and do what I’m doing better. More time to the more important.
4. It does not need procrastination. Putting things off ALWAYS comes back and bites me in the ass but I haven’t learned to just get things done when they first come up. I would love for this to be the year.
   
5. I’m going to banish the term “good enough” because it is exhausting my soul. “Enough” is enough. I am enough just exactly the way I am.
6. I’m not going to worry over certain people’s opinions on my life when what I do, think, believe is really none of their business.
7. It does not need any more “shoulds.” I’ve got plenty of those in stock and they all need to be cleaned out and dumped unceremoniously into a trash bin.
8. It does not need even one single dinosaur fact. So there.
9. It does not need me to think about, plan on, or contemplate entering juried photography shows, exhibits and contests. It does need me actually entering them.
10. It does not need more things (well, except for camera lenses). In fact, it may need a few less things (which could help me pay for camera lenses).
11. It does not need any more over-sensitive. I don’t know how I can change this about myself and I probably won’t, but the title of this list isn’t “Eleven Things You Are Going to Change,” it is “Eleven Things My Life Does Not Need.” It does NOT need over-sensitivity, but it will probably have it. There, at least I was honest about it.

Time, time ticking.

My favorite quote is the one found on the side of my blog "The earth spins at a thousand miles per hour as we all try desperately not to get thrown off." Too often the world feels exactly like that, whirling fast and faster, chewing away bits of our life so incessantly and leaving us to wonder where it all went. If I am going to make a resolution of any kind this year it is going to be to try to slow down my world. To make it less about just holding on, surviving, hoping not be thrown off, and enjoying the moments, holding them as long as I can, being fully present in the "now" instead of anticipating the "then." This coming year I want more ice cream cones. I want more contented, sleepy moments. I want more long talks with friends. I want more TIME. But I won't be given more time so that means I have to find a way to enjoy, savor, truly experience, the time that I have. None of us will ever be given more time but we can slow it down just a little, stop wishing it away (I wish it were this time next week, Only three more days until Friday...), and reclaim it as belonging to us instead of to that merciless madly spinning wheel that whisks it away so fast, too fast.

I can't stop. But I can slow down. I can take on less and then do what I am doing better. I can enjoy things more if I prioritize and stop trying to jam six things into a single day, hour, minute. I think I'll start today, it isn't as though I'm going to be given a repeat. When these moments are gone they are never coming back. Though they are destined to slip away I would rather grasp them as though they are sand instead of water.

Starting Again

It is time to start blogging again. I can feel it. It is time to start up my picture of the day challenge. I can feel that too. I don't want to call it the 365 because I don't want to feel guilty if I miss a day or three, and I don't want to start on January 1. Resolutions left to NEW YEARS DAY (always in all caps when we are talking about resolutions) never seem to stick. Really, how many times have you vowed to be more organized, lose weight, or save money on January 1st? You run out, buy Lean Cuisine meals, tons of folders and some Quick Books software and you know what happens...January 1st rolls around the next year and you make the same resolutions all over again. I think the best resolves start NOW. When you wake up one day and say "I want today to be different," and then you like it so much that you think tomorrow should follow in the same path.

I want to put something on this blog as close to everyday as I can manage. Some days it may be my thoughts, other days just a quote or some song lyrics that inspired me. Some days it may be a photograph I've taken that day, other days it may be a photograph that someone else took that I found meaningful. So long as it honestly, accurately represents my life it is okay. More than okay. It is enough. So, I'm starting again, resolving to focus more on living a creative life. Resolving to take the time to live a creative life.