Seeing Green

It's the color of trees, emeralds (my birth month stone), moss, grass, Granny Smith apples, money, and Christmas trees. But mostly it's just the color of beauty.

Thank goodness for green! It can be calming or energizing depending on the shade, and represents new beginnings, health (and wealth) and nature. When I spend time out in the green world I always come back refreshed of spirit. And I can't deny that I'm looking forward to St Patrick's Day, as I always do.

So here's to green, and to a beautiful Saturday. Hope you're out somewhere green.

Ornamental plum - Three Things on a Friday

Well, the week has gone by! Some days were better than others, but all in all I feel incredibly lucky to live the life I do. And since it's Friday, here are three random things I'm enjoying:

1. My silly little Gratitude app on my iPhone. Every day it pops up on the screen of my phone and asks "What are you grateful for?" I go into the app, type in a few things I'm grateful for at the moment, see an inspirational quote of the day, and I'm done. Typical entries include sunshine, Evan, good food, pretty light, and generally whatever I'm enjoying in the moment. Here's the link if you're interested. And here's another reason you might want to practice being grateful.

2. This album from 2007, one song of which arrested me in a store while I was browsing (She is Gone, track  5, the chord progression of which I just adore - interesting because one of my favorite Santana songs is She's Not There - common theme?). It's a fun little album.

3. Ok, this isn't something you can buy or acquire, but I have to say I am just loving watching the light as it's transitioning into spring here! We've had some beautiful clear days with gorgeous sun and not too much wind. Thank you San Francisco!

Oh for a Standing Desk!

I did it! She's mine, and she's a beauty. After a couple of years of reading articles on how sitting is making us slower, fatter, and more likely to die early, I now have my very own standing desk: no sitting required. Which is pretty cool.

For a while I tried to figure out how to make my current desk a standing one. Raise it somehow? It was ridiculously heavy, and that was never going to look good. Add something on top of it, just a small platform to allow me to stand sometimes or not, depending on my mood? Again, kind of hard to figure out.

That left pretty much only one option: a new desk altogether, which pushed the project back a bit. And then I found out that standing desks are ridiculously expensive or incredibly tiny, without any options in between, and that sort of killed the idea of getting a desk from a regular retailer.

See, there are a few difficulties with standing desks. One is that the desk needs to be custom built for you, or adjustable. Everyone can be made to sit at a pretty uniform level (by using the same chairs) but people stand at wildly different heights. Well, making a desk adjustable makes it more expensive. Ditto with a custom built desk.

So I decided to circumvent the whole problem, and see what I could come up with on my own. I looked into a couple of IKEA hacks, but they looked a bit shoddy and had no storage space, which I desperately need. So I decided to combine the top of this desk with some elfa parts I got at the container store that just so happened to be the perfect height for a standing desk for me.

Score!

And then Evan put it all together, bless his heart, and working at my computer changed drastically. I find I'm much less inclined to surf the day away on the internet (much less - even when I'm not supposed to be working I'll do something else instead of whiling the time away at my computer), and I'm more productive as well.

Also, standing is hard work! After a couple of hours, you really feel it. I bought a stool as well, since you're not supposed to stand all the time, and I use it to take a short break every once in a while.

Yay for my new standing desk! Now I just need to do something about the wall behind it - it's a mess!

In the Reflections

I often find myself at a loss for what to write on this here blog. Images are not a problem - as I type this there are a good ten posts that have images ready and are just waiting for words to make them complete and postable. 

But what do I say about them? I often find myself with a disconnect, or a problem if priorities: which comes first, the image or the words? Should I write about the photos and perhaps not say what's on my mind at the moment, or should I write a post about a topic and then illustrate it with a photo that has absolutely nothing to do with it? 

Or should I plan ahead, and only show photos and produce posts that can do both for me? It's a bit of an open question these days, and one I've been pondering for a while, one that speaks to the very nature of this blog and what it's here for. 

I blog for a few reasons. For one, to share my work, especially personal work that doesn't have a client to appreciate and use it. Also, and maybe more importantly, to connect with all of you, and to create a place of my own on this her huge internet playground. 

So if you don't hear from me for a while, don't despair, I'm just taking a moment to rethink it all and figure out what I want to say with this blog. 

Shoes on Blue

Lamp

We ignore the beauty around us often. I know, because I do it too. And yet, when I have my camera in my hand, it suddenly becomes visible. The chipped paint on the lamp over there, the reflection in the shop window, the fabulous shade of green shot through with sunlight on the other side of the street.

The world is always beautiful, it's just up to us to see it. And for whatever reason, a camera makes that process so much easier.

Try it out. Take your camera out, see what you can find.