Wednesday, 7 September 2016

Ripples of Grief

My dad died on Monday 1st August 2016. A little after sunrise. Some time between 6.45 and 7.15, we weren't exactly clock watching.

He has been gone now for one month and one week, 38 days.

Tomorrow is my parents wedding anniversay. Would have been.

There is a lake of sadness inside of me that is just sat there. It flooded in and I don't know how to remove it.

I can go down to the shore of it and try to let some of it evaporate, but mostly right now I'm just leaving to do what water does. It's seeping into the cracks of my life finding edges it can smooth away, finding parts that seem solid until they're cracked open and fall apart to reveal a whole new cliff face.

Sometimes something happens and a wave crashes over me, I end up sobbing in a coffee shop . That's okay. These things happen. I wish I had some tissues though.

I've never lost a parent before so this is a new learning curve for me, it's going to take as long as it takes. There is no deadline and no bonus points for getting over it first.

I really miss you Dad.

Saturday, 9 January 2016

My New Resolution

We're already past the first week of 2016 and I don't know where the time's gone!

I love the theory of New Years resloutions, the idea of self improvement and completing a self set goal should be encouraged, but I'm rubbish at sticking to them. So I'm not going to make a resloution this year, but I am going to give myself a mission statement. Which is totally differnet and not just semantics.

2016 - The Year of Taking Advantage of Oppotunities

Not the snappiest of statements, but it's what I want to do. I don't want another week to go by this year where I look back and ask myself what I've done. I want something to show for every week: another page of my book, a photograph I'm proud of, to improve a skill. Hell, I'll be happy if I can put together a new blog post every week.

This is a nice and vague one, so I'm not going to feel like a failure if I don't hit a number on the scale. I want to stop wasting so much time, getting sucked into the tumblr vortex or scrolling through Twitter. I want to put my ideas into practise, not just get addicted to the brain crack I have things that I thought of years ago that I haven't really done anything with because I'm not sure I can do them as well as I'd want to. Which isn't really the point.

This time next year I'd like to have less ideas and more things to show for them, talk less do more.

I own hundreds of pounds worth of excellent photography equipment, if we take into account my computer and software, and the fact I can borrow my dad's stuff with relative ease, then we're probably talking about thousands of pounds of awesome technology I have access to and don't utilise to it's full extent.

I have a job that is really stressful when it's intense but also allows for a lot of downtime, and occassionally the fates align so that my down time is in new and interesting places. Working with an older generation and living with the fact my dad has cancer is making really aware of the fact life is too damn short.

It's too short to waste missing the people you love, it's too short to not try every new thing that comes up, it's too short to not grab opportunities or make them. People become bitter and twisted so quickly, I don't want to be blowing out 40 candles and wondering where my life went. I want to know that the next 40 years will be just as full as the first.