Seizing the day-personally and professionally.

 In 2017, I left my soul-destroying day job to become a full time professional photographer. It wasn't because I was making so much money as a photographer that I didn't need my part time, low level corporate job, it was more a belief that, if I didn't do it now, I might get to retirement age and find that life had passed me by. We are all allotted a set number of days on this earth and we have no idea how many they are. Sometimes, it just makes sense to seize the day!

If 2020 taught us anything, it's that life is often shorter than we expected. My husband and I set off on a trip to visit family in the UK on March 9th 2020, to celebrate what would have been my mother's 100th birthday, had she lived. Let me tell you, there is nothing scarier than being far from home when the shit hits the fan! When we left, the government, both at home and in the UK, was telling us that Covid-19 was no big deal. A mere 4 days later, the world began to shut down and flights home became an endangered species. We shortened our trip, paid a huge fee to change our reservation, and returned home on a flight that was a whole lot fuller than the flight over. Every fellow passenger had a story- about catching the last flight out of Poland, aborting a study abroad program that should have lasted out the school year, cutting short a business trip. We arrived home to a changed world of shortages and restrictions. My husband started working from home and my photography business dried up over night. 

It has taken a couple of years to get back to where I was before the pandemic, professionally. 2023 was a busy year of networking and getting back to business. I attended a lot of Chamber ribbon-cuttings at new businesses and, like many of our acquaintances, my husband and I took some long-delayed trips. We spent two weeks in Paris in January without a sniffle. By the fall, however, it seemed like everyone who went on a plane got sick. No one regrets going-it's just a price to be paid if you want to travel these days. 

As I write this, my husband and I are planning a once in a lifetime vacation. Over a bottle of wine one evening, we had a heart to heart discussion about some items on our bucket list. We are neither of us getting any younger and, although we are both in pretty good health now, the future cannot be guaranteed. Neither of us wants to get to the end of our allotted days saying, "I wish..." or "If only..."  It's time to seize the day!  Plans are moving fast; I think this is going to happen in the fall. If all goes well, we should celebrate my birthday in New Zealand!