slowing down

tin can reflection: rock rose

After almost 10 months of posting a new photograph daily at my Flying photoblog and before that, East Lansing Daily Photo (no longer exists), I can feel my pace slowing. Maybe it's a phase, but I feel that intense photographic energy ebbing. And the daily practice of visiting several photoblogs is losing its pull.

Eckhart Tolle talks about three states of mind that are preferable for looking at the world. In other words, if you can find one of these for any circumstance, you will have peace. They are acceptance, joy and enthusiasm. You can't always be thrilled with your circumstances or find joy in them, but you can accept them. Sometimes acceptance even turns into joy, and I've experienced that. Finding joy in something mundane that I used to find tiresome is a great feeling.

The enthusiasm one is a temporary state, he says, for certain projects or visions. I think that's what I had for photography and the photoblog. I was enthusiastic for almost 10 months! That's actually pretty startling if I think about it. I don't think I've ever had such a long attention span for anything, well, except maybe quilt making. But it was always hard to finish one after I'd designed it.

So, I think I'll post a photo every other day, or when I feel it. If I've learned anything in the last 3 years, it's that I get to decide my own pace, what's right for me. I'm glad to have learned a bit about photography, enough to go forward and express myself in it as I do with poetry, without being compelled to answer a daily call.

And hey, Don plans to put a wood floor in the atelier this summer, so maybe the next thing is painting on Grandma's easel in that little building that feels like the center of the universe.

What I long for is human interaction and love, artistic expression, shared ideas, and finding ways to make the world more like heaven than hell. There is joy.



tin can reflection: geranium (pelargonium)