Possibility Days

When it rains, it pours... even in Northern California.

If there was a straw that could have broken this photographer's back, it might have been the phone call I received this evening from the keeper of my freshly fried hard drive saying all attempts at recovering data (months of work and thousands of photos) had failed. It is my own fault for not having a backup, and there are no sound excuses, but when 2016 has been one giant rain delay and work has been slower than Bay Area traffic on a Monday morning, spending the $150 on a new hard during California tax season just didn't seem like the best use of depleting resources... until it became the $500 I had to spend to try to restore it. I'd like for that to be a lesson I only have to learn once.

I have been joking about this chapter of life being the "Impossibility Phase" because it is starting to feel like everything that can go wrong has done so, or is threatening to, and a fried hard drive kind of seemed like icing on that cake.

But rewind to last week when I was driving home on a back road and passed a field full of mustard flowers just begging to be played in... I'd been dreaming about finding the perfect spot to play, but the weather never seemed to let up and when it did, there was other work to be done... until last Thursday.

I love shooting with Alexis because she's always up for a last minute adventure. True to form, with less than 24 hours notice, we were playing in said playful mustard flower field. I'm not entirely sure it was legal, but it sure was magical.

And so was everything else around us.

It was on that adventure that I started to wonder if I had everything backwards. It has been an incredibly trying rainy season... but what if it's all in preparation for things to come?

I have marveled at spring's arrival this year. It's the kind of breathtakingly beautiful that takes time, and I believe the rains have made all the difference.

And so maybe that's it. Maybe this chapter is all about using the downtime time to grow, to learn, to define and refine. To explore, to restore, to create and imagine.

So often, this freelance dance feels like taking one step forward and seven steps back... but what I've learned so far, is that the most important part of the dance is simply to keep going.

So I will be grateful for what I have, hold on to what I know, and keep spreading seeds of what I hope will grow. I will keep going.

This is not the Impossibility Phase. These are the Possibility Days... and I am soaking them in.