Share the Love: Melting Pot

Some days I feel days I feel like logging off and going dark for entire weekends and days at a time.

I suppose that’s what happens when one morphs something that was pleasure into business, answering questions about how to create a Facebook page and whether Facebook advertising is a worthwhile endeavor instead of just simply connecting and encouraging via all the social media platforms I’ve come to embrace.

I remember having this same sort of existential crisis about blogging when people first started offering to pay me to write; if I were to make writing on my blog a job, would that make the passion part fizzle and fade? 

Could I be true to my art and still be compensated for a skill I’ve been graciously given and have proceeded to hone since I first picked up a pencil and began penning stories in second grade?

Eventually I found my groove and decided how best to write with abandon from the heart and still accept compensation for my skill and time, but not without a whole lot of mulling and chewing and spitting out that which was bitter or didn’t match the flavors I’d spent so long cultivating.

Because, sort of like with coffee beans, you don’t want to ruin the blend you’ve been working so hard to create.

I think this is likely the same as with merging the pleasure side of social media with that of the business end. Sometimes the perfect cup of coffee doesn’t just happen. Sometimes it takes a while to blend the two together, a stirring of two really good things – like cream into coffee requires measure. And lots and lots of tasting.

All that tasting often takes remembering that when combined well, the two complement each other quite beautifully. 

And perhaps make the brew all the better.

This post was inspired by MeetSoci. I was compensated for my time, but as always, my ramblings are completely my own. 

Everyday Life: Sing

Sometimes it gets all murky.

Why I come here and open the flood gate to my heart waters, sharing pieces of life I'd maybe have trouble finding words for if we were in person enjoying a morning together beneath sun while watching little ones play in the still-green grass of late August.

Why I open white pages and scrawl out our story, pushing publish without not knowing who exactly is reading our open-book life.

Why I ever thought anyone would want to come into this space and linger for a few moments of the day.

Why I open myself to the criticisms and opinions and allow voices that aren't always kind a microphone of sorts.

I go through these waters every so often when life starts swirling and churning and kicking up sands and muck. In fact, there's been so much muck and mud swirling and churning that its kind of drown out my voice and let me quiet here and well everywhere.

Yesterday a good friend, a soul friend, emailed sharing much of these same heart aches and growing pains that stir when it comes to writing our lives and stories onto pages for others to read and share.

She called it something along the lines of existentialism about blogging, which made me laugh, too, amid the seriousness of this creative pondering and I immediately thought of a song I used to sing my heart out to while driving -- Straylight Run's Existentialism on Prom Night. And as I ruminated on her words and other friends' words, I began making a playlist because I'm always so influenced and motivated and freed by music.

In the murkiness, the words from friends and the words in song were just what I needed to sit in stillness and let all of the sediment fall to the bottom around my feet until the water started getting clearer again:

"Sing with your head up,
with your eyes closed
not because you love the song
but because you love to sing."
{Copeland}

As I quite literally sang, all those whys I was asking and other people often ask me -- all the sediment -- fell to the bottom around my feet -- leaving clear water in their settling.

While I do sing because I love the song

I sing mostly because I love to sing.

And I think most of the time

we all just need to throw our heads back, close our eyes

and sing.

{If you're feeling like you might need a little encouragement to sing your passion, you can listen to my playlist on Spotify for free.}

Everyday Life: The Things You Love

I've been picking up the pieces of so much of what I really love, trying to put it all back into the spaces everything normally fits so easily.

But the thing is -- spaces in the heart sometimes move and morph when we've been growing and changing and transforming.

So sometimes things that fit before don't quite fit in the new stretched and altered skin of the same beating heart.

Because life is different now.

The pregnancy losses, the anxiety, the GI isssues, a forever-feeling sinus infection - each has taken a lot out of me.

Energy out.

That energy out had left little time for anything other than simply healing, simply existing, simply caring for the day-to-day needs of a family for most of December.

And yet a new day, a new year dawns and suddenly in that stretched out heart skin, those spaces beg to filled with beauty.

I pick up my camera for the first time in weeks, and I find in the swift finger click shuttercloseopen that the effort to capture is worthwhile because the warmth in the moments frozen in time reenergizes me.

I press-bleed bright colors onto creamy paper, giving story to the blankness freely with nothing and everything and I feel the pinks and purples and oranges flush through my veins in a burst of life.

I push my body into the setting sunlight and cold air of December and words begin writing themselves on my mind before they ever find pages while my feet pound the pavement; and the energy out actually replaces twofold with energy in.

I'm left in these moments of beauty with more that's come in than what's gone out.

Though none of the pieces fit quite like they once did, they come into the new-stretched spaces and begin to swell and fill the openness.

And I call this, too, healing.

Bigger Picture Moments: The Smallest Jobs

"Do small things with great love."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"Mommmmmyyyy!" my 3 year old cries. "He's doing it again!"

I drop the dishes into the sink and run into the dining room only to find a grinning nearly 20 month old dancing atop of the dining room table.

I thought we'd broken this habit several months ago.

But, oh, dear God, he's at it again.

And with such determination; it seems that every time anyone leaves the dining room abandoned for a moment, E. climbs back onto the table and begins executing his sweet toddler dance moves, sans any audible music.

But he grooves so happily, so intentionally that I swear he's hearing the beats, the melodies of songs in his heart.

I put on my I-mean-business-mommy face before gathering his excited body into my arms and escorting him off of the table.

"E.," I say sternly, staring into his big blue smiling eyes, "we do NOT dance on the table."

He keeps smiling.

And the next time I leave the room, G's hollering again that his little brother's back on the table dancing his heart out like it's his job or something.

And, kind of, it is -- a toddler's main job in life is to explore, connect the dots, put things together.

I mean, really, the kid has no idea that tables aren't meant for dancing.

So he keeps climbing back on top and getting down with his small self because he loves it.

He just loves dancing on the tables, and it's vividly clear, this passion of his.

Honestly, he loves just about everything he does, entering into each activity with open palms, open heart, open eyes.

I look at myself in all of my adultness and think about how I set about doing my own work.

I think about how I scoff at folding the trillions of socks overflowing from the laundry basket without so much as giving thanks for the small feet that fill them.

I think about how I quickly wipe down finger-printed windows, never really appreciating that there are finger prints on there from two little blessings.

I think about how I become slightly irritated by the dozen or so sippy cups scattered around the house, never feeling grateful for the hands that hold them, the mouths that drink from them.

And I think about how I miss the wonder in the small parts of my job. And how I see things only for what they are sometimes and miss altogether the meaning behind them, making it impossible to really grasp the joy, dance my heart out in adoration of the tasks at hand.

Maybe I've just placed too many sanctions on too many things to really find the joy enveloping them. Maybe I don't really see what's laid out before me.

Maybe table tops really are meant for dancing.

Have you found the Bigger Picture through a Simple Moment? Link with Sarah!

Live. Capture. Share Encourage.

{Originally written but never posted in April 2011.}

Everyday Life: A Real Photographer

Earlier this spring when my newly engaged sister asked me to capture some engagement pictures, I could only muster one response:

"But I'm not a real photographer!" I'd stammered. "I don't totally understand all the nuances of my camera. And I cannot give you a definition of the word aperture without showing what I'm talking about and using the word 'thingy.' And, you know, I sometimes shoot in automatic. And I have little artistic vision. And I can only capture in natural sunlight because flashes are big and scary and oh-my-gosh I SO cannot take your engagement photos! "



"We really want you to," she'd said, as she smiled, her blue eyes filled with sincerity.



And how can you say no to your baby sister when she's just so darn sweet and cute and the bride-to-be? {Also, she's photogenic, which really, really helps!}



So, yesterday I stepped way out of my comfort zone, charged my Cannon's battery and requested that the three of us head over to a beautiful forest preserve west of town, and I asked {demanded/begged} to meet precisely at 7:15 p.m. when the sunlight is at its absolute finest for capturing shots.



Luckily, Mike's stepmom, who is a serious, professional photographer, had already captured the love birds beautifully in an engagement session eariler in the summer, so the pressure was off and I felt much better about even attempting a session knowing they already had some lovely shots.



We giggled quite a bit as I directed them to appropriate positions for adequate sun soaking, they did the whole "I'm so in love" thing with each other and I sang them my favorite Killers' song {Smiiiile like you mean it .. wooo ooooh oooh wooo oooh oooh} } as I snapped away, switching out lenses and flipping dials on my camera that I was way too intimated to even think about touching a year ago.



And?



It was good!



We had fun! They laughed, I laughed, they kissed, they made me love love and we managed a few shots that made me tingle with excitement about their marriage {and about the awesomeness of the perfect sunlight because did I mention that sunlight is like the caffeine in the coffee, the sugar in the cookie, the money in the wallet?}.



And I kind of got to thinking that you know, maybe I am a real photographer even though I'm nowhere near professional and quite unschooled about the fanciness of the settings on my camera.



There are real writers who write with passion and conviction, delivering emotional and evocative stories without understanding the exact right spot to put a comma; and maybe so it is with photographers. Real and professional aren't actually synonyms.



Like writing, I think a good part of photography transcends the rules and rests partly on the essence of what's being captured, the authentic voice of the artist.



And, also, maybe the word 'real' when placed in fron of a noun is a lot less defining and a lot more confining than I orginally thought.