Monday Confessions, Where have I been?

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” ~Albert Camus

Well we’ve made it to November in an extremely hard year. Where have I been you ask? Well for starters, I took on a new full time teaching job. Many of you that have hung around here long enough know that I previously taught part-time at the local community college here in DE and I adored that position. I absolutely loved engaging adults in the art and craft of photography. I had been doing that almost 9 years when an opportunity presented itself as an art position at a local elementary school, which I accepted when it was offered to me. I am sure the craziness of getting hired during a pandemic via zoom interviews and calls will never leave me. I am also sure that the difficulty of starting a new position in such a difficult year in education might explain quite a few of my new gray hairs. My new position, along with an extremely challenging parenting season (my kids have been learning from home since early September and just recently went back into the classroom 2 days a week), have left me quite quiet here on my blog! It’s not that I haven’t been photographing things, it’s quite the opposite. October was a very busy photography month for me and November looks to be busy as well.

I am truly taking it one day at a time right now, and sometimes it’s just hour by hour, my friends. The best description I can give anyone when they ask me how I am doing is “like an internet browser with too many tabs open and the connection is slow.” My brain just does not have enough categories to compute everything going on in our daily lives, as well as our country and world at large. I know MANY of us feel this way with the 8 or more months of living in a pandemic alone. The stress and struggle is real. If you add in a significant loss, like losing my grandmother in August and the residual grief and tasks related to that, overwhelm is a constant feeling. Also considering I am in a new position in education at an extremely challenging time, there are days that I just feel like I can’t manage. It’s also a time when parenting and trying to help four children learn at home could alone make me feel like I am drowning. I am not sharing all this to call for any pity, but I am sharing this as an act of solidarity. If you find yourself in overwhelm, know that you aren’t alone.

I am not going to offer any platitudes for you today, as many are floating on the internet. I just wanted to let you know where I am and what I have been doing. I hope to share some recent sessions in the weeks to come!