Considering that the past month’s worth of weekends have been almost nothing but stressful, it was pretty amazing to have a weekend where the stress level was back down to normal (which is borderline low-ish).
Here are five happy things from our weekend:
1. The photo shoot I did with my sister and her family went as smoothly as it ever has (and this is the third or fourth shoot I’ve done of them), and we had TONS of great images to choose from. Although the picture above might not be the one that captured everyone smiling, it still is one I totally love, thanks to the dramatic lighting from the setting sun and the unusual height formation of its subjects.
Even though photo shoots will probably never cease to make me nervous, I love that with each one, I am continually pushing myself to improve and experiment and just embrace whatever comes out of it.
2. I almost always show up to photo shoots 15-30 minutes early to scout out locations, and this time, I was lucky enough to have Matt and Raven with me. Not only did Matt help me find some of my favorite backdrops for the shoot, but Raven got in some time with her cousins AND we were able to squeeze in some pretty awesome pictures of just us before it started.
(If you want to see more from our mini pre-shoot, you can check out my Instagram @torriemeidell)
3. Okay, last happy thing about photography—I’ve still been participating in the online Coursera digital photography class (that I’m auditing for free), and it just seems to have been exactly what I needed to keep my creative mojo flowing. The course has been all about photo composition, which is something that I *thought* I knew quite a bit about before. Well, much to my (happy) surprise, there was a TON of stuff I just wasn’t thinking of before (and a few concepts I’d never even heard of!) when I was composing my images, and it’s given me a totally new set of tools and concepts to work with.
I have a feeling that when I sit down to make my resolutions for the year 2017, photography goals might be at the top of the list.
4. I have *finally* started to feel motivation to start running regularly again. Ever since the half marathon at the end of August, I’ve only been averaging about one run a week, and I knew that I was going to have to find a motivation other than a race and other than weight loss to get me going again.
Well, apparently all I need to do to start running again is read Runner’s World regularly (which I’d been letting sit, piled and forgotten, in the magazine rack in my bathroom). Ever since I started reading from at least one of the various issues daily, I’ve felt all the old love and passion I have for running start trickling back, and I’m pleased to report that I ran last Friday AND this morning AND I have solid plans to run two more times this week, which will mean that I’m back on my normal running schedule again.
*Fingers crossed I can keep this motivation going!* I really have needed the boost that only seems to come from hard cardio.
5. For the first time since I set myself a goal to read 50 books in a year (as an adult) five years ago, I am finally within striking distance of hitting it.
Granted, to hit it, I would need to finish two books a week for the rest of the year, which is a pace that I only was able to keep up during the first part of summer this year.
But still—I’m going to still try and go for it anyway, just to see how close I can get. Why not, eh?
If you’d like to see what I’ve read so far this year, click on the “Reading List” tab at the top of the blog or check me out on Goodreads.
***It must be noted that I don’t count audiobooks towards my total of books read. If I did, I would basically have hit my goal already since I listen to the Harry Potter series on repeat (literally) all year.
What are some happy things from your weekend?
