Month: March 2019

Today I just felt like saying it’s gonna be ok.

If you have been following this project you may recognize some of the origami pieces featured in this little compilation. Today I saw this box of folded paper that I have used off and on for the last few months and thought that I should see if I could put it together in an interesting manner.

There are elements in here that I used in other photos but mixed up with ones that I used for completely different reasons, as I look at it I think of a lot of different things. I think about some of the people that were the impetus behind starting this in the first place. I see some things that I put in them that no one but me would really understand, though if you look back through the older pictures you might come up with your own meaning for them.

I thought that this was interesting to look at originally, which is why I selected it. But I continue to look at it and I see new and different things that I didn’t notice the first time. I make different associations when I look more closely at some parts. I know it seems busy and random, and it is. I sometimes like things like this that you can look at more than once and see something new in each time. It might make a good puzzle.

In a lot of ways this is how I feel about this project sometimes. I started it with some ideas of what it would look like. As I have struggled to find ideas or fought against the idea of just writing about cancer and how much it really sucks, I have seen my motivation ebb and flow. I have felt inadequate like I just wasn’t doing this project justice. And every once in a while I look back on the pictures and some of them just make me smile, or remember something sad or remind me of someone I’ve lost. It’s times like those that even though I don’t love all the pictures and some days I just feel like I have to put up something, anything really, that it’s been worth it.

I still have a long way to go, and hopefully I will be able to put together some pictures that are really great. But cancer still sucks and that’s why I started this in the first place.

Sometimes it is the little things that make a difference. I had a training run this morning and besides the hilly parts that are always somewhat torturous (aside from running that is a torture all its own) I was feeling good. But a tight IT band started to cause a little discomfort around 8 miles in. As a result, I adjusted my gait slightly to compensate for that and instead of stopping or slowing down for just a few minutes I pushed through it. So as of writing this a few hours later my knee and ankle are quite sore. Fortunately, a bit of stretching and getting acquainted with my foam roller should fix things pretty nicely.

But every time I get up or have to use the stairs I am acutely reminded of how much little things can make a difference. I posted 2 pictures today. the top one is just slightly out of focus on the front petal, a very minor adjustment in the second one fixes that.

I’ve often heard people talk about not being able to make a difference. On a grand scale that might be true. Few people make a difference to millions or billions at a time. But sometimes making a difference only takes a very small change. To be sure, it might only make a difference to one person or in one situation, but shouldn’t that be enough or reason enough to try?

Ok, this has nothing to do with Julius Caesar or the Ides of March. I was just playing with lighting today. I wanted something with some interesting shadows.

Yes indeed, I’m a big nerd. Happy Pi Day!

This fish really does need a bicycle, but not today because it snowed. Maybe that is why it is diving. When it warms up the fish will surface and watch a Spring Classic or something.

For now he is just floating along and eating some worms. No one said it was a glamorous life.

I was going to just smash the leaf and let all the pieces stay in a form similar to the original leaf, but these leaves just don’t crumble the way I expected. So instead I arranged them in a pattern like the original shape. But broken things often don’t stay the way they break. The leaves will blow in the wind losing their pattern and devolving into chaos.

Tragedy can do that to us. Hopefully, in the end we can put ourselves back together again, but some do and some don’t. I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We break up and put ourselves back together over and over. Some parts get stronger and some weaker. Sometimes pieces blow away completely and other times they blow into a pile all together.

Since I took pictures of candy last week I thought that it was only fair to show the aftermath of what eating all that candy would look like. Fortunately, I didn’t eat it all. In fact in a few days I would venture to guess that this candy will be a lot like that bowl of ribbon candy that your grandma used to have on her coffee table. You know, the one that no one ever ate but she offered you a piece of every time you came over. And the first time you tried to take one but got the whole bowl.

In case you wondered, I took this picture and there isn’t really a top or bottom when you do something like this, but as I cropped it and turned it around, it just didn’t look right in any other orientation. Kind of funny how that is.

Not sure what the deal is with me and candy the last couple of days. But unlike the hard candy from yesterday, these ones let light through. It’s kind of interesting how you can see the light and dark spots in the candy coating.

Not a lot of meaning in the picture today, just a pile of candy.