Tag: graduation

  • journals, graduation, and photography

    journals, graduation, and photography

    Porter in his isolette probably around August 30, 2006, in NICU Bay 20 at the University of Iowa Hospital

    Journals, Graduation, and Photography — I’ve been using Bear as my journal software for well over a year now (several years on and off, actually), but this weekend I picked up a hardbound paper journal to write in.

    I’ve noticed that my handwriting has become pretty atrocious. It was particularly bad when I had to write Porter’s senior letter to him in April. I never had just gorgeous handwriting, but it used to be pleasant enough. Now it sort of just looks like messy chicken scratch.

    It’s graduation week! Porter graduates on Friday, unless the weather looks bad and they move graduation to Saturday.

    Porter has an IB stole, a National Honor Society stole, a Spanish National Honor Society cord, a band cord, a dual enrollment cord, and an honor graduate cord. He has so much swag for his cap and gown! I’m so very proud of Porter.

    I keep saying this, and it remains true: I am struggling to establish a blogging routine. I am struggling with my identity as a blogger and photographer, truth be told. When it comes to journals, graduation, and photography, I’ve made a lot of quiet modifications to this site recently, and I’m happy with them, but I’ve struggled with creating more content. I struggle to sit down and write with an audience in mind. If I’m writing to my journal, I can literally write all day long.

    The situation is not helped by the fact that I am taking very few personal photos these days. My days are filled up with exercise, housework, and being a mom-chauffeur. These are not the things that make for much creative photography. Maybe I should bake more, or go for nature walks more, or just go on a random photo walk more. Yes, I know I should do all these things.

    Journals, Graduation, and Photography

    What is happening is an existential mid-life crisis, I know this. I’ve struggled to establish an identity for myself outside my previous professional life, and once I had sort of established myself as a blogger of sorts, I decided to take the plunge into professional photography. Semi-halfway, anyway.

    I am a scattered mess. I know this about myself.

    Jared is encouraging, constantly reassuring me that I am enough just as I am, without a proper job, without any particular aim or theme to my life. I am very lucky to have a husband who loves me as I am, and literally the only thing he wants from me is for me to be happy.

    So what is happening with photography? I am still a photographer. I have two weddings left on the calendar for the year in 2024, and I would happily take on more bookings if they come my way. However, I am equally happy to use my camera and lenses for personal use. It makes little sense to dissolve the photography business proper; my actual only business expenses are not that high all things considered. And I have shut down and re-opened the business enough to know that I will want to re-open again.

    Journals, graduation, and photography– all is well. I just need to keep telling myself this fact.

  • porter is graduating!

    porter is graduating!

    Porter is Graduating — We have a Senior!

    It is hard to believe in some ways that this little 4 lb 7 oz being that we brought home after 30 days in the University of Iowa Hospital NICU is almost ready to graduate from high school, and is well over 6 feet tall at this point.

    Porter is brilliant, and funny, and insightful, and wise beyond his years. I cannot tell you how proud I am to be Porter’s mother. Porter is Graduating!

    Porter plans to go to Georgia State University as a philosophy major. Though the religious studies department is a separate department at this point, religious studies was under the philosophy department in my time at GSU, so that philosophy department is sentimental to me. I took many philosophy classes in my time there as part of my religious major studies. I would never have dreamed that my child would consider my alma mater, much less the department of my major, in younger years.

    Porter will be a better philosopher than I was. He has the brain for it. I muddled through okay, but he will excel if he chooses to stick with philosophy permanently.

    Porter is Graduating — It is somehow fitting that the firstborn of a religious studies major and a philosophy and religion/ elementary education major should choose to major in philosophy. I am thrilled.