I Want To Celebrate

There are always more things on my to-do list than I can realistically accomplish in a day or even a week. One day last week I woke up to AMAZING weather…blue skies and mild temperatures that begged me to be outside soaking it up.

I reminded myself that my list wasn’t going anywhere. I grabbed my big camera and went on a 20 minute photo walk around my yard and neighborhood.

Being outside made me feel happy to be alive and wanting to celebrate all the beauty in this world. I took photos of anything that caught my eye. I experimented with my camera as I practiced using manual mode.

I repeated “what if I try this?” and “I wonder what it would look like from this angle?”

I took about 100 photos. The beauty of digital is being able to delete the ones I don’t like. I ended up keeping 12 photos.

Here are some of the photos and words from my photo walk.

This swing is in a big tree in my front yard. I want to celebrate how much my youngest loves it. I want to celebrate how seeing it reminds me that my dad hung it up for her. I want to celebrate living in a place where I have big trees in my yard. That hasn’t always been the case.

I want to celebrate how many flowers I have around my house. One lonely gardenia flower has bloomed on the bush next to my garage.

I want to celebrate remembering how much I loved seeing the airplane lines across the sky when I was little. I always stood in awe, wondering where those people were going and where they had been.

I want to celebrate all the colors and textures that surround me every day. I want to celebrate taking the time to notice and capture them. I don’t always take time to do that.

I want to celebrate experimenting with my camera and getting some unexpectedly cool photos.

Doing this exercise reminded me of how important it is to allow myself to go with the flow. To not take my to-do list so seriously. It will always be there. That list will never be completely finished, so I might as well learn to enjoy the little things along the way.