A little more of Cravens House with a more visible Pat and Tisen

The lovely “beach” in Nice

This little ballerina reminded me of an impressionist painting I have a vague memory of.

Cautiously feeding Cayce

It’s not a biker hang out–this is just typical in Europe where gas is so expensive

Guitar bodies in the rough

Theo and Dale rub noses before Theo manages to back up and land safely on the glove

Daytime moon

My brother and sister-in-law posing being the wheel of a canon at Point Park

My husband with his aunt and uncle (this was a test shot when I was setting up my camera for my husband)

In a recent family portrait, Tisen seemed to seek Tiger out

Cayce hops to my glove in exchange for a piece of beef

Sharing Point Park with family last summer

The unidentified warm-up act had audience members up on stage singing

My favorite view from the easily accessible overlooks at Cloudland Canyon

Tisen Hanging on Daddy

Mom and baby just chillin’

Hipstamatic Version

It must be odd to be face-to-face with yourself

Gina looking fierce in front of unwanted graffiti

The dancers may have been the highlight of the parade

Tisen freezes for me for just a moment

I started the quest to develop a habit of writing 2 years ago.  I chose to try blogging because I thought it would create a sense of commitment by publicly stating I was going to post every day.  It did.  This is my 731st consecutive daily post.  I’ve written about 435,000 words–about 1740 pages–and posted 4921 images in the midst of life changes, long work days, illness, injuries, business travel, personal commitments, and the general chaos of life.

There’s something to be said for that.  I didn’t prove I’m a great writer, but I did prove I am a prolific one.  🙂  I once read Stephen King’s autobiographical book called “On Writing.”  (Great read if you have any interest in writers or writing.)  As I recall, he writes 8 pages a day, every day.  Of course, he probably writes 8 good pages a day as opposed to random dribble.  But that’s not the point.

The point is that something as large as a book is in reach if you can take it on one small piece at a time.  If you can find the one step that you can take today and take the next step the next day and the next and the next, you will find you can walk across a continent.  It may not be the fastest way, but it’s a heck of a lot faster than never taking any steps at all.

This is not a revelation.  I’m sure we all intuitively know this is true.  But the physical body of work that I have accumulated over the past two years makes the message seems far more tangible to me than it ever has before.  I did this.  I created a habit and realized just how much I can do by setting aside a sustainable amount of time to do one small thing.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as “I don’t have time.”  We have time, but we spend it elsewhere.  Without making conscious choices and commitments to how we will spend one of life’s most limited resources, the time gets spent anyway–just not necessarily on the things we would like to spend it on.

However, choices do have to be made.  Will I sleep or will I write my blog while I’m half awake?  Will I go to the gym, or will I sleep in an extra hour because I stayed up writing my blog?  Now that I have a second blog, snapgreatphotos.com, I am finding that I need to make room for the time that new commitment takes.

I’m not quite ready to give up this blog–I love that it keeps me motivated to both write and shoot on a regular basis.  But, I need to downsize my time commitment.  For that reason, I am going to a once-a-week post schedule as of today.

My new goal will be to improve the quality of my posts while keeping to a once a week schedule.  See you next Sunday!