So, today I was prepping for a workshop I’m teaching on Aperture (which you should TOTALLY come to if you live in Chicago!) It’s an overcast day but, damn it is warm so I sat outside on my back deck under the umbrella with a pitcher of watermelon & swiss chard juice and got to work. Only, I got lost in my Aperture library about 3 hours into my workshop creation (yay ADHD and procrastination!). My Aperture library goes back to 2008 so I have 5 years of pictures in here, some of which I don’t even know if I’ve ever looked at! I’ve lived in three states in these last 5 years, completely changed my entire career path and and my relationships have completely changed as well. LOL. Looking at these pictures and the only thing I can swig is watermelon juice. Ha! The “beauty” (questionable maybe) of this day and age is the amount of digital and social media available to catalogue our life in a way that’s easy to access. Like I can see a complete history of the last 5 years of my life in just pictures. It used to be that you took pictures at special events only and then had to wait 7 days your roll of film developed… or you never even got it developed. But I can look at daily random occurrences that would have probably been forgotten had I not had an iPhone to record an image. The ramifications of that are for another blog. As I’ve mentioned before this juice fast kinda sums up a journey and I guess a turning point in my life on more levels than I can probably even see now (as Mr. Steve Jobs has said, you can only connect the dots looking backward). So, I picked 3 images that tell a story and represent where and who I was at the time.
April, 2008. I was at Disney for my “birthday” to see The Mars Volta. I was married. I was in school for fine arts, studying photography and working for Starbucks. This was taken with a throw-away film camera because we couldn’t afford a digital camera. I owned an ancient Dell that someone had given me for free and the most expensive piece of tech I owned was an iPod nano that I didn’t even know how to get music on. One month after this picture was taken, I got hired at Apple! Somehow, they hired me because they knew I could learn. It’s insane because that would never ever have happened 6 months later. It was destiny, of this I am sure.
May, 2010. I am standing in front of my moving truck that was taking me back to PA for 6 weeks and then onto Chicago. I am divorced. I was in a relationship that should have ended on that day. I was working for Apple and moving to open a store! This was taken on MY Canon 50D! I own a white MacBook AND an Apple Mini as well as an iPhone AND an iPod. Whoa. Ugh. I hate to talk about this picture. I can’t believe I’m even posting it but, it must be done. I am fat. OMG, the worse thing is I actually got a little bit bigger than that at the end of that year. Beer, chicken wings, full-time school, full-time work, and an unhealthy relationship will do that maybe. But… I spent the rest of this year continued on that same destructive path.
February 24, 2013. SO much has happened since that last picture, I would write a book about those three years. This though….this is my 27th Birthday at my apartment! Happy, single lady. Working at The MacTutor and enrolled at UIC for Psychology in the Fall. I own a Canon 30D and a MacBook Air. (I can’t even express how much this reflects where my head is at in each of these, btw.) This was my best birthday season ever and THIS picture I can talk about. It is the perfect image to sum of everything up to this point. Total freedom and acceptance of who I am, my place in this world and a relatively clear direction where I am going. And I am CLEARLY celebrating that right here 🙂
And my body directly reflects that. The MOST IMPORTANT part of any body/health change is your mind. Period. Your body is literally an exact representation of where is your mind is, whether you like it or not, its true.
It takes conscious effort to have people in your life that help you make good decisions and to separate from those who don’t.
It takes conscious effort to organize your time so that you have time to get healthy food.
It takes conscious effort to manage your time so you can exercise.
It takes conscious effort to do the things necessary to do to make your path go where you want it to go.
So, this is my blog. I’m telling you my story. Why? Why now have I started?
Well, I’ve changed a whole bunch and the biggest thing I’ve learned is that you just don’t ever know who you are effecting. Small things, big things. I don’t care if 1 person reads this or 100 people or a million. All that matters is that my story could change 1 person and that’s really all you can hope for. Once I realized that, truly realized my power to influence, that changed everything. Everyone has the power to influence and if everyone realized that, it’d be a much different world.
As I sit on my deck, listening to the rain on my umbrella I think of my favorite Dr. Seuss book “The Little Bug that Went Kah Choo”
It’s a super ridiculous story. Read it. Or watch it.
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