Days like this...

Some days are hard. Some days it seems you struggle just to get through. Some days are one silent defeat after another.

Some days just suck.

Life seems to cycle. It goes from being dynamic highs to feeling like I am trudging through the mud. It's hard; I feel beat down. I want to stay inside, beneath the covers and cry.

There is nominal comfort in the knowledge that things cannot stay this way. In the moment, in the muck, when all I can feel is anger and my short tempered flaring and increasing isolation, that is of little comfort.

What is going on? I feel alone and scared and exhausted. There was no catalyst. Nothing "happened." I am just having a bad week and for now that needs to be enough.

So I am trying to stay small, to stay out of people's way, to be detached. It's not your fault things are this way and I won't take it out on you.

It's days like this I think of Rwanda, of being on that hillside and watching the sunset and wondering if life could not always be so simple. 

enjoy the view.

Day Five: Enjoy the View.

So I cheated, this is from a few years ago when my dear friend and I went tree cutting together. I love the image and use it to symbolize this time of year.

Day Six: Some small delight today.

 
Going through boxes of Christmas decorations I came across these figurines that belong to my boyfriend. In the joining of traditions, new ones develop, but there are stories and history in the ones brought into our relationship.

Reframing the Season

Day Two:  Reframing the Season

I wanted to get the Christmas tree up before taking this shot. This is my first year getting a real tree for myself. Before it's always been with my family or a fake one my parents gave me. This tree symbolizes reframing Christmas traditions and making traditions all my own

Day Four: The Key
(What helps you to slow down, take a deep breath and enjoy the moment? Capture it!)

The first thing I thought of was a Christmas light when I read this challenge. Even now, after a hectic day, I came home, plugged in the tree and took a moment. It reminds me to breathe, to release, to let go and just be. I can look at the beauty of the tree and just take a moment. Somehow in what happens around it - family, laughter, forgetting what happens outside this time - I find reality and for a moment, stability.  

Picture the Holidays

I am doing a project called Picture the Holidays this year with Paper Coterie. Each day a different image in the countdown to Christmas.

Day One was gratitude:

I am grateful for the gift of learning and how, even when we least suspect it, we can learn something new. I was in CA and learned about tide pools, something I never knew about being that I am live in the mountains!

Day Three was love - focus on love. Feel it. Be it. Capture it. Share it:

So I chose to be literal - it is all about love, taken on a shoot with the boy no less :-)

(Day two is coming!)