This is both what I want and have in my life. It’s not everything, but it’s been a full life. I’m old enough to have attained the things most important to me. And not. It depends on how one looks at it. The difference between success and failure, contentment or emptiness can be your attitude. This is not to say that there are no real losses. Of course there are. Deaths, partings, endings are inevitable, but they don’t define our life, however painful they are. Nor are we defined by the worst things that have happened to us.
I’ve done most of the stuff I wanted to do, been most places I wanted to go. I took chances. Sometimes the risks paid off. Other times, the results were unfortunate. I regret the chances I never took far more than those I took that didn’t work out.
Look at your life, see good times and happy memories — or focus on failure and losses. Life is never all joy or entirely miserable. There are good times and bad. We all fail. We all succeed. Life is like a baseball season, made up of wins and losses.
We have ultimate freedom to choose which is more important and how we evaluate the balance. In this one thing, we answer only to ourselves.
I started blogging because people kept telling me I should. All my friends. My husband. My family. I’ve always been a writer, professionally and personally. I’d been sick a lot and for a very long time. A decade of being on the edge of dying is a lot of dying time and I was finally beginning to be a person again. The siege was lifting.
Facebook never did it for me. I never liked the format, the scattershot nature of posting. I have so many connections that aren’t friends, just people with whom I played various games. Even my circle of “friends” wasn’t a natural audience.
I had been following a WordPress blog for some months, ATMTX PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG. Every time I wanted to comment, I had to go through an annoying identification process unless I registered. One day, I registered. I picked a name for a mythical blog I might want to write. I chose Serendipitybecause I’m a serendipitous kind of gal. I had absolutely no intention of doing anything with it, but it made following other peoples’ blogs and commenting easier.
That was January 2012. In February, I put up an “About Me” page and posted a photograph because as an enthusiastic amateur, I have a great many pictures. Thousands, though many are not good enough to post anywhere but a family album. Still, there were some I thought someone besides my husband might enjoy. It was more than a month before I posted anything else. In March, I posted once, maybe twice. In April, not at all. In May, I found myself posting a couple of times a week. It was like writing letters. I wrote about whatever was on my mind or had caught my interest in the news. The presidential campaign was heating up, though it wasn’t red-hot yet.
Summer was slow. Vacation kept me away a lot. I posted, but it wasn’t particularly interesting or exciting material and my numbers reflected the ho-hum quality of the work.
And then, it rolled into August. Political hell broke loose. America became engulfed in a civil war of words on the Internet. I jumped in too. My numbers soared overnight. When Sandy, the Monster Storm, hit in September, it gave me plenty to write about. October was all-out class warfare. November. Election and aftermath. A tsunami of opinion, violence. Craziness everywhere. It was my biggest month, bringing in numbers I haven’t matched yet.
By then, I was posting daily, more than once a day. I was reblogging other people’s work. I had found friends and colleagues on the Internet. We used each other as sounding boards and still do. The sense of community was not theoretical. I was part of it and I loved it.
The months have rolled on. I still have no goals. The question keeps coming up and I really think about it, but no matter how long and hard I ponder the question, I can’t find a reason better than my original non-goals. I love to write. I have a lot of opinions. And blogging gives me my own space to post photographs where people other than my immediate family can see them.
I’ve achieved much more than I ever imagined because I never imagined anything at all. I’ve gotten close to 73,000 hits and although I’ve never been Freshly Pressed, apparently there are people who think I’m interesting enough to follow. I’ve made a difference to a few lives.
To know I’ve actually made a difference is a great feeling. Addictive.
I have a focus for my time, a way to use the words roiling around in my head. In my working years, I always wrote for a defined goal and was paid for it. Now, at last, I can write about anything. I have no boss, no word limit, no corporate guidelines. Sadly, I don’t get the paycheck, but I have freedom. That’s worth a lot. And I’ve got a reason gear up, grab my cameras and go take pictures.
I’ve gotten much more than I ever imagined or expected.
Goals? What more could I need or want? Oh, I know. Send money? Please?
I’m not sure whether to consider this statement merely stupid and misinformed, or downright malicious and intended to undercut the ability of professionals in all fields — not only photography — to earn a living.
When did access to tools become equivalent to professionalism? When were talent, skill, experience, and training made irrelevant?
Using the same reasoning, everyone who owns an electric saw or other woodworking tools is a professional carpenter. Is anyone who owns a few rolls of electrical tape and a few gauges an electrician? Is a plumber anyone who can afford wrenches? Is everyone who owns a computer and a printer, who has a blog or posts on Facebook a professional writer? Since anyone can buy paints and an easel, that means I’m a painter, right? Everyone who has a digital camera can make movies, so are we all professional filmmakers?
If ignorance is bliss, I believe Marissa Mayer is the happiest woman on earth.
What do you think? Does access to professional equipment and/or professional tools make a professional? Does ownership of tools convey professional status on anyone with a credit card? I’d like to hear from you. Personally, I find this highly offensive. Am I overreacting?
I was turning 60. It had been a terribly difficult five years. I had felt the wings of the dark angel gently brush across my face. You know death is close when the dark angel does not frighten you but seems more like a friend, come to comfort you in a difficult time.
I’d pulled back from that edge. I’d had a vision telling me to live and I did. I do.
It was less than a year later when my personal calendar flipped to 60. I could no longer pretend at youth. Sixty, is not so old, but it assuredly is not young.
Owen and Garry
Nor is it middle age. Sixty is the leading edge of years termed golden — a cynical stab at making a sow’s ear into a silk purse. The downward slope of life’s mountain is perilous. Sharp turns, unexpected twists, unseen hazards blocking the path. They poke and hurt.
Friends depart or are too tired to want to be social. They move to far away places you cannot visit. You lose your will to battle airports and security. Your passion for travel no longer burns hot. Email and telephones, but it’s hard to hear on phones and even email messages are more succinct.
When I turned 60, my husband colluded with family to throw me a party. This was no easy feat as the pool of friends had so greatly diminished, yet somehow, he did it. I saw faces I loved, hadn’t seen in a long time, and some I’d never see again, though I didn’t know it at the time.
There were friends from every place in my world … family I would never see again. It would be the last time my brother would visit because in a year, he would be gone. I look at the pictures and probably 40% of those guests have moved on to another place, hopefully a good one. The gathering was a great though bittersweet gift.
Life goes on. Good times never end. Always, there are days of laughter but softly, softly there is the ticking of the Big Clock. We don’t miss chances to visit, moments to share.
We live in the now, fully for it will not come round again this turn of the wheel.
The cat on the lawn lives here. They grow corn. And hay. Plus some veggies. It’s a lovely place.
The corn is still green in July.
Corn grows in the fields in late summer.
Just around the block. The chickens used to roam free, but I think the coyotes were beginning to take a toll. The wild turkeys live here too, roaming around, but knowing they’ll get fed.
Mendon Barn
The red barn, Douglas, Massachusetts.
Inside an old barn in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.
The Blackstone Valley has always been a farming community. Although it was the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, the farms have always been here too. People, after all, need to eat and where the ground is fertile and apple orchards thrive, families will farm.
Summer has come, right on time. It usually shows up just around Memorial Day and that will be here this weekend. The cows are serene. The chickens and horses are content and peaceful. The corn is coming up green and it looks like a good crop is on the way. Soon we’ll have fresh local produce and our air will be full of the scent of things growing from the earth.
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
