Everything is Changing

Everything is changing, and I don't just mean the season. 

I refer to something subtle that begins internally until it can no longer be held inside.  A certain power, the acquiring of tools.

It started last Winter when encouraged by an online photography course, I left the safety of my kitchen and walked around my neighborhood, photographing.  I was incredibly self-conscious for months to come, but I kept doing it more and more often.

I felt liberated, and I fell in love with the exploration.  I suddenly had another way to tell a story; I had a new tool.

This doesn't mean I'm good at taking pictures, nor does it make me a photographer.  But a new tool to use opens up the world a bit.

I began walking down a new trail, one that did not loop back to my kitchen table.  Like having an affair (I imagine), I was swept away and didn't care about what I was leaving behind.

I was cooking, reading, baking, gardening just as much as ever, however, I had no interest in photographing any of it.  Most of the time I simply forgot.

I stopped reading food blogs as often, and pored over photography and creative personal blogs.  Yet, I kept on reading cookbooks and personal memoirs about food and gardening.

I'm now in the final week of an online blogging course, and I know for certain that I am not the same person I was since the day I first walked around the neighborhood with my camera.

Recently, I gained another tool, or at least a sharpened, pre-existing one.  I now touch a finger to my heart before I start writing a post.  During these weeks, on more than one occasion, I have sat up straighter, asked myself if I am tapping in to what I feel, deleted, and started over with a slightly different tone.

This doesn't mean I write well or even that I am a writer. Expertise takes a lifetime to develop.

I acknowledge, though, that I possess these tools.  I accept that at their most basic level, I know how to use them.  This is confidence I have never admitted to previously.  I have an internal power now, and for the moment, it is keeping me up at night!

I hope to come back with camera in hand to my kitchen table from time to time, but with different intent.

For once one has developed a mission statement, the whole perspective shifts.

Through photographs and stories, I want to share what I see and what I feel.  My aim is for my personal stories to be universal.