📷 An Eye for Life: My Week Online 🎈 #10

Since I last wrote almost two weeks ago, there have been a lot of firsts occurring in my life. I got on a plane for the first time since March, February 2020. I left home for my first paid assignment as a photographer since before the pandemic began. I hugged another person who wasn’t my family member or my partner and I haven’t done that since long before the word COVID entered our consciousness. I dined indoors at a restaurant and I haven’t done that since March 2020.

It was all part of a work trip to Napa Valley, California on assignment creating photographs for several wine brands working with a group of people who were all fully vaccinated like I am and who followed safety precautions wherever necessary.

It had to happen, eventually.

I struggled with knowing when to go back to work and with choosing what assignment to start with. In the end, I chose the one that felt the most right and trusted my intuition after turning down several opportunities that felt more than a little gratuitous.

My choices will be different than yours. My firsts may be different from the ones you will have, or have already had. But I think they will come if they haven’t already. Because I believe we’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel on a global scale. Phrases like vaccine equity are a part of our consciousness now, and that’s an idea our leaders are committing to. We’ve raised funds to help those who need help, together. Case numbers are going down and the numbers of those who are fully vaccinated are going up.

All the horror this pandemic has brought humanity - has changed us, forever. So that as we move forward, we are hopefully doing so with new appreciation for every new dawn we are given. I know I am. There was a moment one morning this past week where I thought for a second that sunrise had never looked as beautiful as it did then.

That story about the dash has even more meaning for me than it did before this pandemic began and yet I hope we don’t ever have to go through something like this again in order to simply appreciate the magic that is every new day we’re given. If for no other reason then for all the people who will no longer get that chance to move forward with us.

Did you know you don’t have to go all the way to New Zealand to experience a hobbit house ala Lord of the Rings? Those of us here in the USA, need only travel to Tennessee!

Is seeing bioluminescence on your “To Do List”? It’s on mine! Lonely Planet has some recommendations for where we could go:

This photo stopped me in my tracks:

By recognizing Juneteenth and, if we don’t know, educating ourselves on what it is:

By educating ourselves on the flags that matter to those we know and love and those we have yet to get to know, understanding this is just one way in which we can show that we care:

this tweet that still sums up how I am feeling as I write this.

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