pauses&clicks

For almost a year now I’ve been contemplating starting a blog.  It’s been a struggle making the decision.  Do I blog as a mil blogger, offering my perspective as a general’s spouse?  That presents so many dilemmas about being politically correct and about balancing my personal opinions with my innate desire to also protect my husband’s command and the service we have spent our entire adult lives being a part of.

Do I blog as a photographer, sharing my view of the world through my camera lens?  Tempting, but my world isn’t just about photography and I’d like to flex an inner desire to write.

Do I blog as a crafter and an artist, sharing ideas online like so many of the bloggers I read every day and admire?  Their sites are so intimidating and look so time-consuming!

And then there’s the question of….will anyone read it…and why?!

I just wasn’t sure of my niche.

I think I found it today on a walk with my dogs.  I have two beautiful labs who live for their walks.  Today was the truly first brisk day of the season in Louisiana and they were so excited to be out!  They don’t remember much about yesterday, they certainly don’t stress about tomorrow.  All they wanted to do was be out enjoying the cool air and see what new smells were out there to be discovered since our last venture around the green.  They live in the moment.

On today’s walk I watched a leaf’s last flight.  The trees here at Barksdale Air Force Base have been around for almost a century.  They’re huge.  Their leaves have a long way to fall.  This leaf was a brilliant yellow against a deep blue sky.  It has spent it’s entire existence hanging from it’s branch.  Today it discovered free fall as it’s cycle ended.  It twirled and spun and caught the sunshine, turning it into a moving sculpture as it made it’s way down to the ground.  I was fascinated.  It was a moment in time.

Since June, when I discovered an app for my iPhone called Istagram, I’ve been posting a photo a day on my Facebook page.  My degree is in photography and I was classically trained in B&W.  We didn’t crop photos.  That has stayed with me for thirty years.  Instagram is all about having fun with images, it’s about changing the original with filters and edges.  It’s fun.  All photography is about capturing a moment but with Instagram I decided that I was going to make a conscious effort to stop and find those moments, those spaces, those slices of my life that I usually walk past, in order to open my eyes to each and every day, not just the big  “Kodak moments.”

And so this blog will be a combination of all that I am.  It will be about the moments in life.  It will be about my moments as a military spouse, my moments as an artist, my moments as a friend, wife, mother and grandmother.  I promise that this will be my longest post, simply because I don’t want to take up too many of the moments in your busy day.  I just want to share some of the moments in mine, in hopes that you will notice more moments in yours.