In Your Own Backyard

Some days, I really believe that we have too many choices. Too much on the to do list. Too many outside forces telling us to look, well, outside, for satisfaction. Too many people that tell us where we are isn't pretty enough. So we spend our time (note the word, "spend") frantically searching, searching, searching. For what? Whatever advertising tells us we need. In that search, we miss the simplest things. The sunrise. The chance to watch your spouse sleep. The two seconds it would take to actually listen to what your child is telling you. For that child, childhood.

I have to make a conscious effort to slow down sometimes, because I'm just as guilty of most other people of being a "human doing," rather than a "human being." Even though I'm unemployed, my days just fill up. Job search, housework, yard work,

cooking, and last, usually, are things I want to do. My various art projects (many in different stages of incompletion), watching the sun rise, calling my 99-year-old grandma, touching base with old friends who are now far away.

A couple days ago, I caught the sunrise. It was worth getting out of bed for.

Yesterday, as I was doing, doing, doing, I noticed the little Japanese Maple in my backyard. The leaves have turned already, the rain hasn't yet come to knock them down. I've been admiring the colors for days. I realized if I didn't get out there to take a few pictures soon, the leaves would be gone and I'd have missed the chance to capture the beauty in my own backyard.

Now, the light wasn't ideal in the photographic sense. It wasn't the fabled "golden hour" (which wouldn't have done any good anyway, because my backyard is in shade by sundown), and in all honesty, I'm not a photographer and I don't have the slightest idea how to set an f-stop. Whatever that is. (I suppose I'll have to read a book sometime soon, if I'm to be posting pictures with this much regularity! In my spare time, of course...)

I just see pretty things, and I try to see them everywhere.

Especially in my own backyard.