The Winter Solstice is when I reflect on the last year and think about changes I want to make in the New Year. The winter is long and painful for me and this is the point where I can celebrate being halfway through the time when the sun is rarely here. Warmer and brighter days are coming and it’s natural to make hopeful plans for the future year.
So, 2014… well, it was different. Very different.
We hear a lot about the professional accomplishments of our peers, and sometimes we share very personally in them. Maybe we’ve been there, or some day we hope to be there, whatever the reason, we get it. I’ve shared a few this year that were quite exciting, but I didn’t share too much of the downside. I’m not going to now, in other than a general sense, but if the truth be told, 2014 was probably the most challenging year I’ve experienced since I switched careers from Quality Management to Photography in 2008.
On the outside looking in, things probably looked rosy. The year started off well; I went to some conventions, competitions and judgings. I went to our state convention, did well there and had the most wonderful honor of being presented with the PPA National Award. My first article was published in PPA Magazine, a goal I’ve been hoping to achieve for a great while.
It was all good. It was all really good.
But, then my knees were cut out from under me. And I had to suck some stuff up big time. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and when you do things as publicly as I do, like teach classes and write blogs and sit on boards, you have to maintain some kind of decorum. And when things go tragically wrong, as they sometimes will, it’s just best to not let on.
For awhile, I had to quit writing. I’m an emotional person and the connection between my heart and a keyboard can be a dangerous one. My writing on Wootness slowed down to the bare minimum, my enthusiasm for print competition waned and the only regular writing I did was a monthly article for Southern Exposure, the magazine for PPA’s Southeast Region, where I kept it fairly together.
Fairly. I did have my heart on my sleeve while penning an article about mentoring; an article that I’ve thought numerous times about issuing an explanation for. It drew harsh criticism that hurt, but it also drew those who were touched, and who cried as much during their reading of it as as I did during the writing of it. And in the end, I decided to leave it be, since it was where my heart was at that particular time.
And then there was a health issue that knocked me on my rear end and caused a drastic change in darned near every facet of my life. It’s all good now, but for awhile, it was pretty…hard, discouraging, frustrating and scary.
And then, there was some other stuff. But again, it’s all good. Now.
Yes, it’s all good, now – but it’s taken nine long months to put a couple of things into perspective and I think this is a real good time to clear all that nonsense out of my allotment of give-a-dangs and go forth with things that are only positive in nature. It’s been hard. I’ve made some difficult decisions and changed a few of my closely held heart-truths. I’ve lost a few heroes, and a couple of friends.
But it’s all good. Now.
And I’m back. I’m really back. For awhile I was faking it in a major way. I was calling in my performance. I was not at my best on many levels. And on some, I was at my absolute worst. I did what I needed, the best that I could, at the time. But a lot of those times, my best kind of sucked. Perhaps no one even noticed, but I did.
What’s the Wootness here? Some will say I made it through, that others have it worse – there’s Wootness in that. But sometimes I think there just isn’t gonna be Wootness. No one signed a contract with me that life was gonna be all bacon and Pop-Tarts and this year kind of proved it.
And so we move on. And greet 2015.
With hope. And a bright and shiny clean slate.
It’ll be good. It’ll all be good.