What Makes a Fulfilling Day

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If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.
You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

Jim Valvano

How many days do you spend just going through the motions? Sticking to the routine you’ve become comfortable in? Thinking that you’ve lived a full day because you made it through the day without incident?

But maybe it’s the incidents that actually make your day full. It’s the times you discovered something new because you took a different route to work. Or you actually read that Facebook post about someone’s friend with cancer and allowed yourself to feel for them. Perhaps it’s intentionally looking for the humor that life presents all the time but we don’t look for.

Jim Valvano made a good case for living this way in his well known ESPY speech from 1993. Suffering from cancer and not knowing how long he had to live, Valvano presented a three prong approach to living each day fully. “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day.” These words of his are simple but so often ignored on a daily basis. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. There are many days when I do one of these things. Maybe days when I do two. And to do all three is rare. But there are more days when I don’t do any of them at all.

When you have a health problem or other major life event, conciously living in the present and embracing emotion is often easier. You begin to see life as a finite resource. Your whole life you might have heard that you don’t live forever. But it’s hard to conceptualize this while you’re young, in good health and living comfortably. But being young, healthy and comfortable doesn’t mean you’re living a full life. It just means you’re still alive.

Don’t get me wrong, being alive is good. Living, however, is better. It’s a skill that Jim Valvano seemed to have for much of his life and that he took to a new level after he got sick. Watch his speech below and take notes. Then make it a point to live intentionally. Laugh, think and let your emotions bring you tears of joy or sadness. Done daily, you really will have something special.

 

Photo Challenge Day 6 – Independence Monument

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Today’s Photo was taken from my backyard. I was thinking about what to shoot when I noticed the shadows giving Independence Monument some depth where it usually blends in with the background. This was the laziest shot I’ve taken for this challenge but it turned out nicely.

30 Days of Photos – Day 6

Day 6 – Independence Monument

 

Photo Challenge Day 5 – Cactus Flower

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For Day 5 of my 30 day photo challenge I ended up in the desert. I spent two hours exploring and photographing flowers, landscapes, bugs and animals. It was a great time and the most enjoyable of the photos I’ve taken for this challenge so far. 

I think I took over 160 photographs and I liked a majority of them. The picture I chose for today’s post might not be my favorite. I can’t really tell because I have so many favorites.

If you want to see more from my hike you can check them out on my Flickr page

30 Days of Photos – Day 5

Day 5 – Cactus Flower

Photo Challenge Day 3 – Watering Can

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This watering can and the pots were left at our house by the previous owners. I thought the can was unique and interesting. I have a bigger one that I actually use for watering plants. This one is mostly for show. But, perhaps I will use it anyway. Using things that are beautiful and functional is more enjoyable than using something designed only for utility.

30 Days of Photos Day 3 – Watering Can

Photo Challenge Day 2 – Train Signals

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Yesterday I declared that I would take a picture each day for 30 days and post it to this blog. I’m not backing out. But I am changing the rules a little.

While I’ll be taking a photo a day, or at least choosing my favorite out of multiple photos, I’ll actually post them the next day. This will give me a chance to choose, crop, resize, touch up or otherwise get it ready to post.

It will also give me a chance to actually take the photo. During the week, If I don’t get it early in the morning, it will likely be taken late in the evening. So I don’t have much time to do the other things I mentioned above.

Yesterday I was busy from early in the morning until about 7:00pm when I finished grocery shopping. I was on the way home but was scanning my surroundings for a likely photo subject. I saw it suddenly and pulled over into the dirt shoulder underneath an overpass.

I was about to get out of the car and start working out my composition when I realized that everything was framed just the way I wanted it. So I rolled down my window and got ready to take a shot from the car. Right as I was about to release the shutter, a truck with a car carrier pulled in front of me and stopped.

That was almost the end of my shoot but the guy didn’t stay long. He backed up a few feet (further into my field of vision) and then just drove away. Who knows what was going on in his mind but at least he got out of my way. I like photographing industrial things with strong lines line power poles, fences or unique structures. This time it was railway signal lights. With the stormy sky as the background I think it looked interesting.

30 Days of Photos – Day 2

Day 2 – Train Signals

A Photograph a Day for 30 Days

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Last week I started trying to take one new photograph per day. My goal is to get the camera in front of my face every day and improve my photography. Some days it feels like a chore. I’m tired or feeling uninspired for a subject.

Other days I’ve found that I can’t wait to go exploring to see what catches my eye. Maybe I thought of a subject earlier in the day. Or sometimes the morning or evening light is just so beautiful that any subject will look good.

Regardless of how I feel on any day, the discipline of picking up the camera and forcing myself to use it will pay off.

I didn’t start off doing this as any sort of 30 day challenge or 365 day project or anything. But I think it could be fun to turn it into something like that for the blog. I wouldn’t be able to guarantee a good photograph every day. But hopefully they would get better over time.

All right, let’s do a 30 day, photograph a day challenge. Today is May 2nd and there are 31 days in the month so it works out to start today. Some days the photograph will be in place of any other post. Other days I’ll probably just use it as a supplement.

In a way, I’ve already been participating in this challenge since my one-a-day photos have appeared in my posts Raspberry Leaf, A Nest In The Rocks, The Secret Life of Dandelions, No Matter the Beauty and Potting Up The Garden.

But going forward it will be official. I’m putting myself on record as having to do this every day. Hopefully, doing this live will give me the motivation and accountability to keep up with it. If I can make it through 30 days, I’m sure I can keep it going well beyond that. 

I’m going to make things just a little easier on myself by using a photo from a couple of days ago as my first one. That’s because I haven’t had a chance to take one today yet but I want to get this post out of the way. You can call it cheating if you want but oh well. So here’s todays photo to start things off:

Day 1 – A barbed wire fence post

Potting Up a Garden

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We recently moved to a new house that has a very small yard. This was quite a step down in size from our previous 1.5 acre property. But it’s amazing how good it feels to have a small area to work with rather than a big one. You can see the results of your improvements so much quicker and clearer. There’s less space to spread out but that just means you have to be more creative with the space you do have.

Because of our now small space, I’ve embraced the idea of container gardening. The people we bought the house from had left most of their pots behind and in one of them I even discovered raspberry canes coming up.

Over the weekend I finally got some great herbs and flowers and got them potted up. So far I’ve put in rosemary, sage, basil, dill, thyme and peppermint as well as a couple of perennial flowers.

The herbs came from a local organic farm called Sage Creations. They had great selection and the plants looked really good. Despite the name, Sage Creations specializes in lavender. I’m looking forward to going back in mid-June to see the lavender bushes in full bloom. Hopefully I’ll get some good photos to share with you here.

I still have a few pots to fill up. I’ll likely get some nice annuals to add some color and make the back patio a little more inviting. We also have a small side yard that has a patch of dead grass and dirt that’s just asking for a small raised bed for a few vegetables. It would be a great opportunity to practice square foot gardening just to see how much food we could grow in about 12 square feet.

There’s also a community garden a few houses over from ours where each house has their own small raised bed area. I don’t know yet what the rules are for using pesticides and since I only grow organically, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. I might just use it to grow ornamental flowers, gourds and decorative pumpkins for my wife.

So even though we’ve reduced the size of property we’re responsible for, there are actually quite a lot of options for gardening and even food production. I’m excited to see what it will look like when everything is in.

New Game: Carcassonne

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Meeples clowning around before our first game of Carcassonne

 

We love games at our house. I’ve always been more of a Rummy or Yahtzee kind of guy. I enjoy simple rules and easy game play where your turn comes around fast. Although I have been known to promote a rousing game of Schafskopf or Russian Bank in my time. 

My oldest son loves involved, intricate and complicated board and card games. Thankfully, his latest game is more of a compromise in my favor. Carcassonne is a cool little game of placing tiles and building cities and roadways. The rules and play are simple but there’s a surprising amount of strategy in where to place the tiles and whether to put meeples on them after they’re placed.

I love games that can bring the whole family together. In this case, my wife even agreed to play with us. And with a whole bunch of expansions to buy, the game will hopefully stay fresh for a while.

 

A meeples after party

Evil Breakfast

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I felt a strange, villainous thrill this morning while making breakfast for my two kids. I was making them bowls of creamy buckwheat cereal. After it’s cooked I usually add raisins, banana, raspberries and cinnamon. It was the cutting of the banana that inspired my inner dark side on this otherwise bright Saturday morning.

To explain this, I have to tell you what I ate for breakfast. My typical breakfast (which this morning’s was) consisted of half of a jumbo avocado, a heap of ground golden flax seed, ground turkey, fresh lemon juice, rosemary, pepper salt and olive oil, all mixed together. When I cut the avocado in half, it inevitably leaves a thick smear of dark green on the blade.

This morning there was a good amount of avocado left on the knife. When I went to cut the banana, the avocado mash transferred to the white fruit, making a ghoulish design.

I knew that if either of my kids saw this or even heard about it, they would revolt and refuse its inclusion in their food. I’ll never know what made me cut the banana without first wiping the knife blade. But once the deed was done, I knew I would get away with it. With all of the colored ingredients I put together in the bowl that little bit of green would just blend right in.

So I mixed it up and gave it to them. I smiled a crooked smile as I watched them shovel in the very thing they would have rejected if they had been aware of it. I felt somehow empowered by my secret activity. And I knew, right then, that I would do it again.