As many of you have gathered by now, I LOVE my yoga practice. Not only is it great for the body and mind, but also spirit.
We solve the world’s problems (at least for a minute), we listen to each other about the stressors of the day/week (great therapy), and boy can we laugh at ourselves without embarrassment (great joy).
Our early morning class is a family where we all can be ourselves.
It is a great way to start the day.
What do you do when you feel like life is so crazy you feel that you are stuck in the mud? Right now that is how I feel. We just maneuvered through two years of crazy Covid and now we are in outrageous inflation, housing costs and fuel prices, and Russia is “invading” Ukraine. The “quotes” are there because I guess it is politically incorrect to use the term invading. I don’t care – just call me politically incorrect – I own it! It is so easy to let our minds wander down the road to a year from now and see the disastrous repercussions of what is going on now.
I feel like the country and the world is, as my Sister calls it, a “sh*t show”.
Here is what I TRY to do. I shut off the TV. I retreat to where I feel grounded. I take Wally for a long walk in below freezing temperatures until I can’t feel my face (that is what I did this morning). I find a body of water and just sit and listen to music (what I am doing now). I meditate. I talk to God and I thank Him for my many blessings.
I feel, and some may disagree, that the stuff that gets us stuck is “of this world”. We are all human and get sucked into it quickly and easily.
It is these times we need to take a breath and just STOP. Stop letting the media creep into our minds and look at the world in all dark grays – find the colors. Get off social media if that is what triggers you – I am lucky that a lot of my Facebook family mainly post positive things. If there is a person who is doom and gloom, avoid them when you feel vulnerable – but when you find your center and strength, ultimately help them to see that life is not really that way.
While I am writing this, I am sitting in my car, looking at the frozen lake with a lone person ice fishing in the distance – I am finding my center, finding my peace.
I have been taking pictures for as long as I can remember. Way before the digital camera, I recall having a 110 camera with a cube flash bulb, an automatic Kodak 35 millimeter camera and my manual Nikon 35 millimeter. I know I have had other cameras, but when I got my manual Nikon, I was hooked.
Over time I have no idea how much money I spent on developing film. I sometimes felt like I was an honorary member at the little Fotomat huts in the parking lots of malls. When they went away I started sending away to a photo developing service. I would wait for days, sometimes weeks, to excitedly open the envelope of photographs hoping they weren’t blurry, blank, filled with people having red eyes, or that I somehow completely missed the shot.
The anticipation of waiting for the returned pictures eventually lessened when film processing evolved to onsite locations. All you would need to do is pay extra money for one hour developing at the local drug store.
It is all about trying to preserve memories in a perfect shot.
I like being able to manually focus the camera on my subject. When I was blessed to go to Europe in 2000, I schlepped my manual camera everywhere. Back then, I was still using rolls of film. I can’t remember how many I took with me and developed when I returned stateside – for some reason 24 sticks in my mind. I was a wanna be photographer (I still am).
I held out for as long as I could making the transition to the digital camera. Hubs bought my first one (come to think of it, he has always bought my digital cameras). It was a small point and shoot which I used mostly around the ranch taking pictures of our critters.
It wasn’t long after getting the point and shoot that Hubs upgraded my camera to one that had a manual option.
Even though just about everyone has access to cameras on their phones, my Nikon is very seldom out of reach.
