blue mood (52 photos)

final sunset in tuscany

It is rather poetic that this week's 52 Photos Project theme is The Blue Hour. While this refers to the color of the sky just before sunrise or after sunset, it also captures my mood as I find myself settling back in after two consecutive vacation trips away from home. Not that I am feeling blue; but I am caught in that in between state of integration. There is the me on auto-pilot before taking a break and there is the me I reconnected to while absent from the usual demands and distractions of my daily life. Vacation and travel always effects me this way. It allows me perspective to evaluate what I value in my life and also determine what is absent or lacking.

I am by nature a bit of a hermit. I am pretty self sufficient and can go days with very little interaction with others. Yet I also crave connection and community. Balancing the two has always been an issue for me which is why on the surface online communities seemed like a perfect solution.

Then I spent a week in Italy totally unplugged and I was aware of how much time and energy I devote to staying in the loop. I came home conflicted as to how I could maintain relationships built upon regular communication but also manage some level of depth and integrity to those connections. I have found myself in the past commenting on other blogs and forums for the sake of expressing my interest to be a part of things but not necessarily because I have all that much to add to the discussion.

I had a brief spell at home before heading out to heritage camp with Cowgirl and I left feeling like I was hopelessly running behind the train that is online social media. It's a strange feeling to consider oneself behind in one's life. Or rather behind in my creative life.

But it was also liberating to just create in my journal without a sense of what anyone else is doing. I have to remind myself that much of what I do is in the spirit of exploration and discovery; I am trying on various forms of creative expression and I am searching for that perfect form that fulfills my needs. In fact, I doubt there is one medium that will satisfy me and it is becoming apparent my challenge is to know when it is time to switch things around. Photography, writing, painting - each form offers me a different lens for examining my life. Each speaks to a different mood. And then there is the question of finding my style (or my voice) which is beautifully addressed in this post I fortuitously stumbled across today.

So yeah, I am in a funky state but one which is not without its unique beauty. I admit I feared I would be forgotten in my absence and then I came home to find so many friends leaving me comments and along with new voices hopping over from other blogs. While wondering about this whole virtual thing - is this real? - I am discovering the connections, the support and the abundance of this world is very real. Sitting on my counter, the bounty of mail love affirms these relationships nurture me and others in very deep ways.

Each friend represents in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. (Anais Nin)








I am not a different person because of blogging; rather this space and the community fostered through questioning, sharing, supporting each other have allowed a fuller version of me to manifest. A very real me.

There. I think I've removed the last bit of lint from my navel ... at least what was gathered from my travels. Back to our regularly scheduled whinging.