A New Year - A New Challenge

The first new day in a new year always brings with it reflection over my life; it's direction, my goals and ambitions, my social life, and the events that have taken place over the last year and sometimes even further back. The regrets I may have, which are honestly very few, and the actions I should have taken and the path they may have created in my life.

My life was changed when I met my best friends, Blanche* and Rose*. It changed again with the meeting of my now husband, Jamie* and the birth of my daughter, Emily*. With my marriage and birth of my daughter my family became the major focus of my life. I have never completed college, even online at home programs because my focus and time is spent with my daughter, as it should be!

One of the hobbies I have always enjoyed over the years and has been a secret dream of mine is photography. I love looking at pictures, taking picture, sorting through them, and in fact I am a picture hoarder. I will take hundreds of shots and throw 99% of them aside (but never out!) as being inferior. I will print photos I'm not happy with because somebody wants to see the picture I've taken. As technology has grown and advanced over the years I moved into digitally scrapbooking items and photos; however, with the birth of my daughter this also fell into the when I get to it slot. My photos became photos of my daughter - being under 6 years old we already have several thousands of photos and hours of video of her. With the technology of cameras in my cell phone - it only increased the number of shots I took of her and raised the level of "No Picture!", "No Video!", "Are you recording me?" and "NO!" because she often gets tired of being the center of this attention.

One of the sites I used to scroll around on is Gotta Pixel, a digital scrapbooking website. I loved their artists, their forums, their downloads, and their step by step instructions on how to accomplish some of the same looks with the tools you had.

This year they are starting a new thing - 365 Challenge. The challenge is to take a picture every day this year. This is not a difficult challenge in and of itself as I mentioned above I take thousands of photos. I am adding a different spin to this challenge for myself - I have to take a photo a day that does NOT include my daughter, and to some extent my husband. I will review this particular challenge if the prompt for the day is about families, however I am going to strive to have no photos of my daughter for this challenge.

Wish me luck and let's find out what I learn about myself during this coming year and what strikes my fancy when my family is not at the center of the activity.



* Names have been changed