Photography

I have been really into photography lately. Both as a hobby and as work (my current day job is as a photo intern). This has been a great creative outlet and has helped immensely with my better understanding of visual art and film-making.

Also almost all of the photos I have used for this blog have been taken by myself. So I recently created a free website to specifically showcase some of my photo work.

Check it out!

Making Mistakes

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."  

- Albert Einstein

I make mistakes all the time. 

Let me tell me you about this one at work the other day. Being a dutiful employee, I had cleaned the large printer the night before and so when I came into work the next morning I had to put back the parts I cleaned. While replacing the parts, I dropped a piece into the printer, far down where I couldn't see. What resulted was three hours of me trying to find the piece, getting co-workers to help me, and finally calling tech support to help me take the printer apart to find the piece to get it running properly. So it all worked out in the end.

However, I felt incredibly frustrated at first. I was worried that my supervisor would be upset with me for losing a piece. I was worried that the printer wouldn't work anymore and it would be all my fault.

These worries ended up being groundless, though, and the solution was easy to achieve. Most of the time our worries about making mistakes are not worth the stress we put on ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes, not just me. It's part of learning. Take the printer story for example. If I didn't drop that piece inside the printer, I wouldn't know how to take it apart properly. Now if something happens again I will feel much more confident in fixing the machine.

Mistakes can happen anywhere. I make mistakes in my relationships. I get the wrong kind of candy for my girlfriend or forget a special date or change plans unexpectedly. I say something offensive without thinking it through to a friend and hurt their feelings. Mistakes can happen with goals I have for myself, such as goals of not eating too much junk food or not spending too much money. I can beat myself up every time I give in to cravings and buy a bag of chips, or I can move on from the mistake, accept responsibility and resolve to make better choices in the future. 

I am not an accumulation of my past actions. I am this person. Here and now.

Getting Sick

So in my last post I made plans to get back into my exercise routine. Well, that didn't really work out.

I got sick last week, with either the flu or food poisoning (not really sure what happened). I don't get sick very often and when I do it usually isn't that bad, but I got hit hard last week. I am still reeling from the effects and battling a stomach ache.

Still, this is a good time for me to realize that sometimes things come up unexpectedly and I have to deal with those things. I've been sick the past few days, so I haven't exercised or written much. That doesn't mean I should stop doing those things altogether and give up on my goals of being healthy and writing more. In times like these I have to strengthen my resolve and get back to the routine. 

When I feel better that is.