It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life
I took a workshop a few years ago about finding your life’s purpose. It was an appeal to my Feely side and it turned out to be much more beneficial than I dreamed it could be. The end result of the day-long seminar was to create a personal mission statement. It was supposed to be short enough and easy enough to remember if you were being held at gunpoint and asked to recite it. After going through several worksheets to help identify verbs and values that should be included in the statement, I eventually derived this statement:
My life’s purpose is to illuminate, celebrate and participate in the circle of life with friends, family and the Universe.
I like it. The verbs really resonate with me and what I find valuable, useful and important in life- both at work and not. It also was important to me to recognized the Circle of Life as I know it is constantly moving and must be a part of how we live in this world.
Parts of the circle of life are easy for celebration and participation. Birthday parties. Graduation. Weddings. First bike ride. All kinds of things. And, some parts are harder.
Yesterday, I had to participate in one of the hard parts of the circle of life as I said good-bye to my dog, Haleakala. From a post I wrote back during my Project 365:
Back in March 1999, this skinny scared dog showed up in our yard upon returning from a trip to Hawaii. We named her Haleakala and on April 22, 1999 (Earth Day) she came inside the house for the first time. So, we declared Earth Day as her unofficial birth day. She got some treats from a vendor at yesterday’s Earth Fest. She loves them!!!
Saying good-bye to her was one of the hardest things I ever have had to do. She was diagnosed with cancer three months ago and the decline started shortly after that. It is a gift that we can prevent suffering and pain but it is a hard gift to give.
But, I want to celebrate her life and what she gave to me.
I went through my Flickr account and pulled together a slideshow of good, bad and ugly photos of her over the past 4 years or so. You can see what a pretty girl she is.
The Circle of Life keeps moving and so will I as I keep illuminating, celebrating and participating.
Just back from the downtown event that was part of the Worldwide Photowalk. Over 900 cities hosted their own event where photo-oriented folks gathered together to walk around and take pictures of what they saw. Reminded me of my Project365 days. So, about 25 of so of us tromped around the Old City, downtown, Market Square (home of a very popular and vibrant Famers’ Market) and other places such as that capturing images of what makes our local area unique.
Just knowing folks around the world are doing the same feels really cool. Once again, through the power of social media and networking, we are able to share both in the experience itself and then what we felt about it after it is over.
With a whirlwind o’ travels over the past two weeks, I am (yet again) woefully behind on my POW postings.
Funny, I met someone at the conference last week who I follow on Flickr because I recognized her from her pictures. She also follows me and we had a nice face to face conversation. One of the things we talked about was our Project 365. She had to let hers go for a long while and is trying to decide whether to just start over or try to get back into it “already in progress”. I was telling her how much trouble I am having just keeping up with one picture a week instead of the daily photo..in some ways, it seems much harder than the P365 postings did. Hmm..
Anyway – get ready for a few photos coming in fast and furious as I go hit Flickr in a minute!
Interesting that I stumbled upon (but not via StumbleUpon strangely enough) this post today since I have been thinking about my little ole’ T-F corner of the blogosphere (can a sphere actually have a corner? I digress…)
With the end of the P365 project last month, my posting volume has certainly declined. I am still blogging at my two school blogs but not here as much. Hmmmmm. And, then one of my three readers told me that she missed the photos but was still reading the blog. That got me mulling over the purpose of this blog. Why have it?
I started it for a few reasons:
To grab a domain name for email that was not tied to any service
To learn how to set up and maintain WordPress
To get into blogging at some level for my own personal education and creative outlet
The P365 got me into the habit of blogging with (mostly daily) frequency, which was another of the goals of that project beyond the photos.
Now, I guess I need to take some time to find the focus of this blog or decide if it really needs a focus. I’m not trying to make money, I have no dream to be a full-time blogger (but I admiresomewhoare and morewho are not). I consider T-F a place to share thoughts, capture some odd ideas or things I find out on the interweb and a way for folks who know me to stay connected. Those all seem like great reasons. But, are they too selfish? Nah!
At first, when I saw this term “ego-blogging” from Michele Martin.. it got to me a bit because I was afraid that if I started getting too much into naval-gazing, it would become an ego-blog. Do. Not. Want.
But, according to Michele, “ego-blogging is when I write a post primarily because I’m hoping that it will get me noticed and that others will link to me.”
I don’t think that is what I am doing here at T-F. I guess that is a good thing. I’m sure I will continue to think about this blog its purpose in my life but I will also continue to just put stuff up here because it interests me and (hopefully) my three readers as well!
This is it…the last photo of my Project 365. These are my good friends in the area who join us each month for our movie nite. We celebrated my birthday eve and watched “Little Shop of Horrors” Big Fun!
As I look over this past year in photos, I’m sure to find that the majority of the pictures were kittens (it was their first year, of course) but I also bet there will be plenty of pictures of food, fun with friends and life being lived. Can’t ask for more than that, now can we?
Today’s the day…my first 5K. I got my number 799. So, my goal was to finish in less than 799 minutes. I did. More photos in another set. I think Wren, my support crew, was trying to do her best monster impression for this picture!
Went to Asheville (again?) on a short notice trip to meet with a good friend who was in from upstate NY. The fun thing about Asheville is that you never know what you will see downtown. This time, a little girl in a purple wig with her puppy.
Interesting that I stumbled upon (but not via 
