Picking up...

The arrival of September evokes warm feelings in me. Every year as August winds down I reminisce and am reminded how much I loved returning to school after the summer break.

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year... It’s the most wonderful time of the year...” is exactly how I feel. New school clothes. New book bag. New pens & pencils neatly tucked away in their case. New scribblers and binders organized by subject. The nervous excitement of meeting my homeroom class for the first time. I was never a great student. In fact, good grades weren’t all that easy for me to achieve.

A.V.E.R.A.G.E. That’s pretty much how I see myself. Somehow over the years average has become a “dirty little word”. I’m average although I have always had the drive to be more than average. I always wanted to make my mark somehow on the world. What I learned this summer was that being average is something I am more than average at being.

How did you spend your summer vacation? Remember being asked this on your first day back to school?

I remember having to write a one page story about how I spent my summer vacation almost every year I attended school. I have no recollection of what I wrote on those pages, but I suspect a few of those years contained anecdotes of my family summer camping trips, or the places I visited while being a competitive swimmer.

This year my summer vacation consisted of waiting for my favourite person to arrive home, having relatives from afar visit our home, hosting a surprise birthday party, eating out waaay too much, complaining about the month of rain and then complaining about the month of sweltering heat and humidity, squeezing in a couple of wonderful day sails, seeing a couple of movies, worrying about sick relatives, visiting hospitals, attending a beautiful baptismal and having unexpected visitors, spending the day in the heat and dust with the horses and family at exhibition, indulging a little too much, frustration with camera equipment failures and doubting my abilities to actually take photos, making a necessary medication change; but mostly I spent the summer wondering how to find time to make some special memories with my guy, and ultimately letting those wishes slip away.

This summer I learned…

… to trust my instincts.
… to not doubt myself quite so much.
… that my flaws are what makes me me; and that every person who walks this planet is flawed one way or another.
… that I am more creative and productive with lack of sleep.
… I am a woman with strong convictions.

I was also reminded that I am happiest when I have no restrictions or plans in place. I work best when I’m plugging along to my own schedule.

Over the next little while I’m sure I’ll delve a little into what some or all of these statements actually mean.

Wally’s crazy schedule is now continuing. Wednesday he departs for the last of the trials prior to his deployment in October. Right now it looks like he’ll be home September 25-27, so I’m pretty stoked he gets to be here just after my birthday on the 24th. Fingers crossed that schedule won’t change.

I am working on some changes with my blog. I am see-sawing back and forth as to whether to do a total update and focus more on photography or just leave it as is. Either way, I will definitely be sprucing things up around here, however, I'm sure I will continue to share the non-sense of MY LIFE…the crooked path of my sweet, sweet life.

As we prepare for the changing season, I only hope that all of us can find joy and happiness in the mundane things that make up the majority of our lives.