to dream, perchance to sleep

Hooray! I received delivery of the calendars today, and they look great! Even after so many years I still get excited when I see my work in print! Those who ordered delivery by mail can expect the courier on Wednesday or Thursday. Those who ordered by hand, unless I've made other arrangements with you I'll see you after the 9th of December (because I'm going away tomorrow for some R&R - yippee!) And those who haven't ordered but would really like to, I've printed extras just for you! :)

I've only been taking photos for work (and my nephew's birthday party) this week again, so it was back to the archive for this week's pic. I felt like sending something a bit different and rediscovered this photo, which got me thinking and I ended up writing the following:

I created this self portrait almost a year ago, titling the photos from the session "In-Deepen-Dance", celebrating both the tangible independence singlehood brings, as well as the possibilities it provides to rediscover, reconnect with, and deepen one's quintessential identity.

At the time it was just my way of entertaining myself, keeping myself positive and creative when I was still reeling from the extreme change in direction the major facets of my life had taken. Little did I realise just how apt this expression would be, or quite how it would manifest! If I had known what this year would be like for me, I think I may have chickened out and asked for the pill of bliss and ignorance! Fortunately no such option was presented and so I journeyed through... well, I'll leave the details and just say that this has been the most emotionally challenging, and possibly least enjoyable, year of my life! It has also been the year of the most wonderful growth of awareness and insight, of deepened understanding and acceptance. Growing pains sure hurt like hell, but damn! the results are worth all the hard work and suffering! The saying "faith it till you make it" certainly applied to me this year; many times my feelings were in negative disaccord with what I was doing, whether it was for work (feeling that my photos were nowhere near good enough, unable to believe the positive responses from my clients) or for play (doing things I normally relish with people I thoroughly enjoy, yet unable to experience enjoyment), yet I continued, trusting that what I was experiencing was not intrinsic to me, that things were actually way better than I was currently perceiving them, and that what I was going through was, regardless of duration, temporary. (There were certainly times - plenty of times! - where I felt completely overwhelmed, feeling that it would last forever despite knowing that everything always changes, all the time! And this was where my loving family, good friends and a few complete strangers helped me through - some knowingly, others perhaps unknowingly. Thank you all!) Trusting that, given time and patience, things always work out has certainly been proven over and over in my life. The journey always continues, there are always highs and lows, and it pays to remember that the highs and lows have their own highs and lows. (Life is fractal!)
Phew, I ended up on a different, more candid, ramble than expected! All I was going to say is that I'm going on a much needed relaxing, rejuvenating retreat for two weeks. (Yes, I went on a meditation retreat in spring, but I can tell you that ten days of sitting still in silence for eleven hours a day is exhausting and certainly doesn't fit into the commonly accepted idea of R&R, valuable as the experience was in many other ways!) Mom, thank you sooooo much for this utterly wonderful gift!

But I guess I'm also sharing a teensy bit of my experience this year because I know many of you (and others) who have been struggling with various things to some degree or another this year. We get worn down so slowly that if we're not careful we only become aware of it when it's become extreme. Yes, it's healthy, fun and very rewarding to push ourselves that little bit extra now and then, and we have the resilience and reserves to do it when we need to. But many of us keep putting in that little extra when its demanded (sometimes by others, but, I think, most often by our own unrealistic projections of what we believe others may expect), and the little extra today on top of the little extra we put in yesterday grows exponentially, yet imperceptibly, into  a massive, overwhelming, unreasonable extra... which, after a year, or two, or six, of slowly eroding our energy reserves without giving ourselves the time and resources to replenish them, causes us to implode and collapse, forcing us to make drastic changes instead of subtle shifts to our lifestyles. Trust me, it's a really unpleasant, inconvenient and costly way to go about it - it takes lots of time and effort to regain our well-being! (I know, I've ended up spending the year researching and experimenting!)
So, as the year winds down and pressures build up (as my friend Hilana said, November is the month when people find they suddenly need to do all the things they meant to do the previous ten months!) I hope you manage to create a bit of space for yourself, to allow yourself to take an honest look at what you're doing, whether the things you're giving importance to really are the things that are important to you, and also how you're doing things, whether taking a little more time to carefully consider things allows you to be more efficient, leaving you with more time for the things you really want to do, and the people you really want to do them with!

Time is a bunch of everlasting, ever-changing, moments... may you allow yourself the time to enjoy all your moments.

Have a wonderful week!
Andy