A Lost Art

Two years ago, I joined the 365 Days Flickr Challenge, largely because I was so impressed and influenced by shutterbug Jennifer Hartman Jensen's blog, Everyday In A Photo. And because so many of my DEN PLN participated, I wanted to join them. The goal of the challenge is to see your world in a whole new way through a daily photo. Truth be told, I did see my world in a whole new way, enjoying the challenge to capture the moments in which I live. I saw the finite parts within the whole, looking at composition with a different lens. Stamens and pistils, water on a leaf's blade, a startled duck in flight from the pond, first light rising behind our mountain, a blue valley--I lived more intensely inside the photographic moments.

Then my dear friend Jennifer Dorman, who anchored the PA DEN blog, broke the news via her social networks that she was hired by Discovery Education (we saw that one coming, Jen), leaving a vast void to fill. Since I was the other blogger, an occasional poster, I tried to fill her footprint. Impossible, but slowly I found my niche, leaving 365 Days in permanent suspension. No regrets. Just exchanged one challenge for another.

Now life presents a different challenge, one I did not anticipate that feels a lot like 365 Days. Similar, but different. I am no longer taking a literal daily snapshot showing my world in a whole new way. But I am living a whole new way, relishing life moments with a new intensity for seeing, feeling, and being.

Quite honestly, I do not want to lose this mindset, fully living fully freighted inside the moments. It's a good thing. Life no longer looks like fast-speed forward. I'm not TiVoing my life, nor am I trying to fill more space in high definition resolution. I'm just living in the moment, and I suspect it is a lost art.