Slow Down

I really enjoy the album Our Darkest Days by the band Ignite. There is a song on that album titled Slow Down and one of the chorus lines is, "When the day is through all I want to do is slow down." This is kind of my theme for this post, or at least, I'm trying to make it so. Things have been terribly crazy lately in my life, and I haven't had the time or energy to post on the blog. I've been trying to make some choices where I can to slow myself down. Next Monday I should get some relief at work when the woman who will be reporting to me returns from maternity leave. I'm hoping that once she gets back and we're splitting the workload that I will have some energy left over to focus on my personal life once again.

My son's transition back to school after winter break was...bumpy. That has added another layer of complication to our already full lives as he's currently suspended from the bus. So we've had to rearrange schedules in order to get him to and from school each day. Luckily my current job is close enough that I can work from home in the mornings, drop him off, and still be at the office at a reasonable time. We're in the process of searching for a new counselor to try and get some additional help; as much for our parenting tool belts as for our son.

I've been using what little free-time I've been able to find to really catch up on my reading, especially the pile of physical books that have been sitting on my nightstand. I just finished reading The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. I had picked this one out to read last summer and just hadn't ever gotten to it. It was a very interesting and unique story and I would highly recommend it. I think I'm going to try to finish The Story of Edgar Sawtelle next, although I did start that one previously and am almost halfway through, it's been a bit of a slog. But it's supposed to really take off soon I've been told!

I've also been trying to focus more on my photography, but in a different way. I learned how to take photos on a SLR camera, notice there is no D in front of that. But in the rush of my busy life, I'd become somewhat dependent on the automatic settings in my current DSLR camera. I would often use the aperture priority mode, but I was allowing the camera to pick some of the settings for me so I could quickly take the photos that I wanted to use. I decided that wasn't providing me with the control and satisfaction that I wanted, so I've slowed down and starting shooting only in manual mode again. Not every image is turning out exactly as I'd like, but it's quickly coming back to me and it's just more fun.

I took a couple of pictures that didn't turn out great, so I played with the Topaz plug-in that I have for Lightroom to turn the photos into "paintings".

This picture was of the moon getting ready to go down behind the mountains while surrounded by clouds. I didn't use a fast enough shutter speed to capture the detail on the moon, but the other elements showed up nicely so turned it into a black and white painting.

This picture is of the last light of the sunset one evening. I didn't get the focus as crisp as I would have liked, so I turned this one into a "watercolor" that ended up sort of looking like stained glass.