Into the Great Unknown
I went with my aunt from Atlanta to my ‘other home’ in Aiken, SC this weekend to visit my parents. Always good to escape from home #1 to home #2. It’s a great getaway weekend and only 3 hours away. I lived there for 11 years, and while I’m more suited at this stage of my life for city life, I need regular doses of my small town home.
While I was there, i had a perfect overcast day for a photo journey.
I headed out in my little SUV to see what photo-worthy subjects were around the corner. Boy, did I find them. Planned on forty-five minutes and ended up dragging myself back home an hour and a half later.
I came across a big wild dinousar plastered on a pink house with sunflowers growing all over the front yard, and in chalkboard – written next to the dino – someone had simply written “Vote!’
And right next door there was a pale pink mailbox in front of a pale pink, old Ford truck, with pink and black dice hanging appropriately from the rearview window. Someone had painted “Willy’s” (Willy, perhaps?!!) in pale blue on the backlift. Oh yeah…picture worthy indeed -I captured every angle possible. But it didn’t stop there……all sorts of campy art was covering the front porch of the pink mailbox house (yes, next to the dinosaur house!).
I also came upon a colorful horse statue in the middle of downtown that had horse sayings in different colors written all over its body. More good stuff to fill up my camera card.
Probably my personal favorite shots though were a couple of old-timers’ smiling faces – country folk who drove by in their trucks to check out what i was doing, slowed down and allowed me to catch them.
Considering i had set out to add to my repertoire of Aiken shots to use for a gallery downtown, I found what i was looking for and way more I wasn’t looking for. I’d struck gold on my spontaneous adventure.
This outing encouraged me to do this more often in my own home town. There’s a surprise around every corner if you keep your photography eye open, and I loved being able to go home after a short, fun stint – just doing my job – with a final result I couldn’t be happier with.
So, thank you God for sending me such a vast array of unexpected craziness and for giving me the eye to see them as I do. And for such a rare, unusually sophisticated, small town I also call home.
As a photographer, it made me realize the value in just setting out the door with no plan – only to look, see, shoot, and smile.
I am Woman (with power tools). Hear me roar.
There’s something to be said for taking a break from computer/technical world and hitting the great outdoors, whatever it may look like in your neck of the woods.
I started getting in a blah-I-have-to-remember-there’s-a-world-going-on-out-there mood, and figured it would be good for me to get out in it and breath some fresh (cool for a change 
) air.
I unenthusiastically changed into my workout clothes and made myself take a 3-mile walk around the action-packed park. The golf course side is literally right across the street, and it’s a gorgeous park, but I was awful glad to be on foot today and not caught up in the 5:00 every-sports-practice-dropoff-known-to-man traffic…..ugh. If anything stresses me out these days, it’s THAT place in a car at THAT time. Serious insanity, no thanks ;-P
My walk was awesome – music blaring in my ear, cool day, a lot to watch and see along the way (people in lines of cars not moving!), and it did the trick in the “remember there’s world out there, Lila?!” department.
Then I started getting into yard work on my way back up the driveway to my house. It’s my new therapy in my new house with my new BIG yard. I’ve discovered that i really love doing yard work. So far, I’ve become a stellar mower, heavy electric hedgetrimme user on a tall ladder (yikes), weed 
puller and pile gatherer, and TODAY I pulled my new electric blower out of the box, and and fell in love with yet another power tool. I”m becoming a Power Tool Gatherer – who woulda thought?! I’m becoming obsessive-compulsive about my yard, and I think it’s because I get some good adrenalin-pump up using all these tools.
And, of course, as I learn to take on each new ‘man’ task, I’m singing in my head Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman. Hear me Roar, lalala-la-la-lalala”!
A good hard walk and a power tool fix did me right… back to my wonderful world of photography with a renewed vigor and She-Man attitude 
Note to self: When I get the blahs, the remedy is right outside my door.
Inspiration is Fleeting…Grab it!
Every day now, I’m working on this exciting new project I’ve developed called “A Day in the Life Photography”. And in the process, I’ve recently been able to objectively observe my approach to taking it on each day. I wake up and have to decide which, of the countless aspects of it, I should take on first. This is one of the biggest challenges of developing a new branch of a business and especially for someone with Serious ADD!
Yikes – I’ve always been organized, but working mostly from my home has proven to be tricky. I’ve realized in the past couple of weeks that I have had to come up with a failproof system to prioritize and keep things moving in a swift, consistent direction. Working on it…!
I’ve also noticed and come to accept that there are just going to be days when I’m inspired beyond belief and you couldn’t pull me away from the specific task at hand if you put a gun to my head…”ok, so hold on for JUST a minute before you pull the trigger so I can just clean up these last few details.” And other days that, yes, I’m working, but maybe I get too excited and anxious(?!) and cannot stay on task to save my life, flipping around from one ‘must do right now’ to the next like a little kid at a playground who goes from swing to slide to sandbox to monkey bars and never really sticks with any, but has a good time nonetheless. Rrrgh.
The latter case are the days that make we wonder why inspiration of this sort comes and goes…..why am I SO inspired and on task some days and like a Mexican jumping bean others? Is it the moon phase?! Is it my ADD meds? Is it just that way with every creative artistic thinker in the work arena?
I don’t know the answer – still pondering that one. l guess I need to stop pondering and go do something else (although, maybe not?! Maybe this is what I should be doing right now ;-/? And considering that the inspirational groove is not in swing today, that “something else” should probably be to work on my failproof system mentioned above – at least until the next thing inexplicably demands my immediate attention!
Bored at The Ted?!!……is that even acceptable? :-o
I went to a Braves game tonight and had 11th row seats between home and 1st – hard to beat seats my cuz and her husband offfered up, as they’re so kindly prone to do.
So, even though it was my ex’s weekend with our boys, I took my older son and a friend (one of his closest who conveniently lives across the street).
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I adore the company of my son and his friends (great age for boys), so I was excited to have the chance to just have these two all to myself – no little brothers, no other mothers or fathers, just the three of us.
And we did have some fun, interesting conversations along the way for sure, but then came a shift in our laughing, bonding trio…..oh, bother.
The boys had another friend there with his parents and he asked if they could go to the 755 Club with him…on the direct opposite side of Turner Field. Of course, I let them go, and they loved it so much they took full advantage of all the amenities and just made themselves at home, for quite a while.
Suffice it to say, I was totally dismayed to find myself Bored(!) at a Braves game, even with awesome seats.
After the boys left on their mom-approved adventure and I’d been sitting by myself in my black sundress on a nice, typically entertaining night at The Ted for too long, the drainage of adrenalin started tapering off. The excitement had worn down and I all I could think about was how badly I wanted to suddenly go home and be done with this event that had suddenly turned into a solo ‘adventure’.
It was just a strange, and disappointing feeling to be feeling the way I was feeling(!) and I tried to start the blessing review to lift me up to a more accepting frame of mind (“how can I be BORED?? I’m at this incredible venue with a high excitement level and the kids are having a blast. Life is good, damnit!”) but, alas, it didn’t work ;-/. I got more and more tired and yawning incessantly and sinking down slowly into my chair, feeling myself sinking into my bed.
In the end, the boys came back after a few texts and check-in calls (GOOD boys
and we watched one more inning and cruised home, much to my surprising, but now accepting, delight! Ahhh, home is where I needed to be Happy, multi-blessed Mama I am after all.I just still can’t get over the fact that I can now say I got impatient and BORED at a Braves Game – that’s a first for me. And surely a last?! Just another of life’s strange head-musings that makes you take note of yourself in a new way. They can be fairly useful….so….here’s to more head-musings, and peace with whatever the situation.
Good night, Bloggies, et al
