Tag: self-exploration

  • grateful — december 28, 2024

    grateful — december 28, 2024

    I’ve been radio silent on this blog for a while and every time I post I think this is the start of when I might start posting on a regular basis. The truth is, I write every day, sometimes on Facebook but without fail in my journal software. I’m interested in being a blogger, but I’ve felt like I had to guard my words and thoughts for a while now and a lot of what I wanted to write about just really wasn’t appropriate to write about in public mostly because it would re-traumatize myself.

    Anyway, I’ve been doing gratitude lists daily for over a year now and they’ve included 50 things on them since February or so of this year. For much of the month of December, I posted my daily gratitude lists on Facebook for my friends to read. But likely, they are tired of that daily oversharing, and I do have this space that is all mine. So, here is today’s gratitude list. I doubt this will be a daily post. But, it makes me feel good to post it here today.

    1. I am grateful for Jared.
    2. I am grateful for my marriage to Jared.
    3. I am grateful I can get on with a routine and not worry about exactly staying awake as long as Jared does.
    4. I am grateful for my education.
    5. I am grateful for mornings.
    6. I am grateful for foggy mornings.
    7. I am grateful for AGI, brie or goat cheese, sunflower seeds, a protein bar, and decaf coffee + collagen for breakfast.
    8. I am grateful for the way photography re-trains my brain to see the beauty in the world.
    9. I am grateful my children are healthy.
    10. I am grateful for peace and quiet.
    11. I am grateful for Mow, Nancy, Bess, Abby, and Trixie.
    12. I am grateful for my family.
    13. I am grateful for Jared’s family.
    14. i am grateful for my memories.
    15. I am grateful for my education, both inside and outside the classroom.
    16. I am grateful for music.
    17. I am grateful for art.
    18. I am grateful I know how to read.
    19. I am grateful I like to read.
    20. I am grateful for healthy changes in perspective.
    21. I am grateful for forgiveness.
    22. I am grateful for time to think.
    23. I am grateful for Steve Ross yoga.
    24. I am grateful for good friends.
    25. I am grateful for my church.
    26. I am grateful for all the churches I’ve attended in my life.
    27. I am grateful for my work history.
    28. I am grateful for comfortable shoes.
    29. I am grateful a simple Christmas 2024.
    30. I am grateful for good teachers and mentors.
    31. I am grateful to know a lot of talented artists.
    32. I am grateful to know how to cut my own hair myself.
    33. I am grateful to know how to do simple trims my family’s hair when they want me to.
    34. I am grateful my family is not hungry.
    35. I am grateful to be volunteering somewhere again.
    36. I am grateful to have discovered chickpea pasta.
    37. I am grateful to be both a cat and a dog person.
    38. I am grateful to have a blog.
    39. I am grateful for the years I spent tinkering with WordPress theme designs. It meant that when I bought a theme I liked, I could tweak it to be just so like I wanted.
    40. I am grateful to know how to play the piano.
    41. I am grateful to have a real piano in the house again.
    42. I am grateful that 2024 has been a year of growth.
    43. I am grateful to be less afraid of the world these days.
    44. i am grateful I’ve finally had the patience to let my hair grow.
    45. I am grateful it doesn’t matter if my hair ever thins because I do actually like how I look bald.
    46. I am grateful for modern medicine.
    47. I am grateful for modern psychiatric medicine.
    48. I am grateful to know at least some history.
    49. I am grateful to appreciate history.
    50. I am grateful I like to learn.

      Happy Holidays, Everyone.
  • the power of a gratitude practice

    the power of a gratitude practice

    gratitude practice

    Over the past year or so, I have developed a fairly elaborate gratitude practice.

    My gratitude practice is slowly transforming my life. It has helped me curb my compulsive spending habits. Keeping a gratitude list has helped me transform my mindset into a much more positive tone, and it has also helped me cultivate a truly grateful attitude.

    About a year ago, I started making a list each day of things and people I am grateful for. I started out my practice by listing five things each day that I was grateful for. That progressed to ten things eventually, and now my gratitude list includes fifty things that I am grateful for each day. 

    There are two things that are helpful in maintaining a gratitude practice: It is easier to do it at the same time each day. I find it easiest to make my gratitude list in the mornings. Also, when I have difficulty thinking of things to be grateful for in my life, I go back to the relationships I am grateful for in my life. 

    It is not easy to maintain a gratitude practice. I was pretty militant at first at keeping up with my list daily, but now I do sometimes go upwards of a week between making my gratitude lists. I have discovered this is a practice of intentionality. I have also discovered when I neglect this practice, my more negative mindset tends to creep back in. The positive mindset effects is my motivation for keeping up this practice.

    As an example, here is my gratitude list for today:

    Grateful Oct 7, 2024

    1. I am grateful for Jared.
    2. I am grateful for my marriage to Jared.
    3. I am grateful I have discovered physical therapy.
    4. I am grateful physical therapy is not just me doing exercises.
    5. I am grateful I have a great physical therapist.
    6. I am grateful for my jewelry collection.
    7. I am grateful I can cut my own hair.
    8. I am grateful we live in Carrollton.
    9. I am grateful I am not going to bed hungry tonight.
    10. I am grateful we could get ice cream tonight.
    11. I am grateful that I am alive.
    12. I am grateful that BG and I are communicating again.
    13. I am grateful that the current hurricane isn’t headed for Georgia.
    14. I am grateful I can occasionally sit on the reclining couch.
    15. I am grateful for Abby sitting at my feet.
    16. I am grateful for Trixie wanting to be close to Liam.
    17. I am grateful Oliver has friends.
    18. I am grateful Mama and Daddy have Carrollton Presbyterian Church.
    19. I am grateful Jared got to meet someone who also thinks several special people in Jared’s life from his past are also special.
    20. I am grateful that Jared loves me.
    21. I am grateful for Covenant Presbyterian Church.
    22. I am grateful that my hair is growing.
    23. I am grateful that I ate a pretty balanced diet today.
    24. I am grateful that I drink decaf coffee.
    25. I am grateful that I could sleep in this morning.
    26. I am grateful Jared is playing D&D with his friends.
    27. I am grateful to have time to myself to work.
    28. I am grateful to be rekindling my love of writing.
    29. I am grateful the weather is good today.
    30. I am grateful we have an alarm system.
    31. I am grateful our dishwasher and our washing machine and dryer all work.
    32. I am grateful I have a safe place to sleep tonight.
    33. I am grateful my children have enough to eat.
    34. I am grateful Porter still wants to spend time with us.
    35. I am grateful that Porter texts me sometimes.
    36. I am grateful that Porter is doing well in his college classes.
    37. I am grateful that Porter doesn’t mind me tracking his phone location while he is downtown.
    38. I am grateful that Porter is not giving up on his education even though he doesn’t love GSU.
    39. I am grateful that we have a nice home.
    40. I am grateful that we have a home.
    41. I am grateful that we can pay our bills.
    42. I am grateful that Liam is doing so well on learning to drive.
    43. I am grateful that I still have the drive to tell my stories.
    44. I am grateful that it is okay to tell my stories even if those stories have evolved from what I thought they once were.
    45. I am grateful to have a blog.
    46. I am grateful for my photography business.
    47. I am grateful that I got to shoot a wedding at Cloudland Canyon.
    48. I am grateful that I have photographed 43 weddings.
    49. I am grateful for my camera gear.
    50. I am grateful to have some alone time tonight.

    This is my list from today. Sometimes, things from the day make it onto the next day’s list and I do not stress over whether I repeat myself. In fact, I have found that repeatedly listing the same items over again multiple times ingrain the feeling of gratitude over a certain relationship or thing. I hope my experiences with my gratitude practice helps you in your own! 

  • helene reminds me of another time

    This type of weather always scares me. 

    One February morning when I was 10 years old, I had to have been the only kid who had to go to school at like 10:30 in the morning after a tornado hit our neighborhood that morning. That was a bum deal; I was traumatized and wanted the day off too, but Mama and Daddy made me go. 

    The week before had been a tornado too, and but the worst of it was that we’d lost a tree that had come within probably 10 feet of hitting our house. 

    But the next week, a tornado picked up a whole house a hundred yards from my house and put it in the middle of the street, foundation and all. The only reason somebody wasn’t killed was that the people who lived there had moved out a few weeks before. 

    For months after the tornado, you could see the inside of the Greene’s bedroom, up the street, from where the tornado had torn off the whole front side of their house. They eventually had to tear the whole thing over and build from scratch.

    The people’s trampoline next door ended up in the back yard of the house across the street. 

    Some kids down the street rode their mattress down into their front yard, when the front of their house was torn off and their room was exposed. 

    I still remember my friend Amanda yelling my name frantically from across the street at like 6 am when the weather had passed and it was safe to go outside. Mama and I walked up the street, and Channel 2 news was there in front of the Greene’s house. Mama was interviewed but so far as we know they didn’t use the footage. 

    People from all over Carroll County (and probably farther) came driving through the neighborhood for days and probably weeks to rubberneck. 

    I was in high school or college before I found out that the lay of the land in that part of Carroll County is primed for tornadoes, just because of the contours of the land. 

    We took down five trees earlier this year in the yard we have now, and it’s nights like tonight that I am so grateful we did that. And I wish we’d taken down about four more that I would go take down now, in hindsight. 

    I am the Mama who goes and gathers up all my children and shuttles them to bring their blankets and pillows and make pallets on the bathroom floors in severe weather— my kids have grown up doing that and know the drill.

    And that is why. Because when I was 10 years old, there was very good reason to be afraid of a storm. 

  • fun at the pool

    fun at the pool

    I used to enjoy doing a lot of stuff I don’t do much anymore.

    The pool at the rec center closes its summer hours tomorrow, so Jared and I skipped Funny Girl at the Fox so we could take Oliver and Liam to the pool. 

    I wasn’t going to get in the deep end. I didn’t want the chlorine damage to my hair. But Oliver loves the diving boards and the deep end, so it wasn’t long until Liam and Oliver were in the deep end. And Jared joined them soon after, leaving me in the shallow end by myself. 

    That was boring.

    And then I remembered that I used to LOVE diving off the high dive at that rec center pool when I was a kid, when there was one.

    Now, there are just the two lower diving boards. 

    Oliver and Liam had never seen me jump off the diving board at all. It had probably been at least 29 years since I jumped off one of those diving boards; if I had to guess it was probably the summer I was 15 because that would have been long enough for me to do it after my back surgery.

    So I got up there, and it was higher than I remembered. But, I jumped in. And holding my nose with my hands did nothing to keep the water out of my nose because I didn’t remember to blow out my nose as I jumped. 

    And, I had to keep my eyes completely closed, which was not my style back in the day. But I had my contacts in because again, I wasn’t going to get in the deep end at all today. 

    But jumping off that diving board…..it was like I was 10 years old again, in day camp at CPRCAD. It was fun.

    So, I went again. And, I decided, what’s the worst that can happen if I actually dive? I mean, really? I used to dive off the super high dive, and this wasn’t that. 

    I may be 44 years old, and my kids may never see me do fun physical stuff much. But today, they saw me dive off that diving board three separate times. 

    It was so fun. And it reminded me that I should do that kind of stuff more often. 

  • hi from denver!

    hi from denver!

    Hi from new site hosting! I spent the past four days, while I am holed up in a hotel room in Denver, re-building my WordPress site. I converted back to self-hosted WordPress from Showit. Showit is phenomenal and I would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a business site, but honestly it became out of my price range. It wasn’t ever really in my price range to begin with probably, but now I am trying to be more responsible in my expenses.

    I’ve decided to continue with Caroline Price Photography; I am open for bookings! With the decision to stay in business has come a new pricing structure. It is outlined on my “Photography” page, but weddings will be $600 for up to ten hours of coverage, and portrait sessions will be $99. This decision and pricing structure will allow me to continue to serve clients best.

    Some photos from Colorado! These were taken at Arapaho National Forest:

    Arapaho National Forest
    Arapaho National Forest
    Arapaho National Forest

    It has been a good break away from the boys and I am so grateful to both sets of their grandparents for taking good care of them for us.

    I haven’t taken a tremendous amount of photos, but it felt good to have my camera out in the mountains on Saturday.

    It’s also felt good to have some forced alone time to think. Think about life in general, think about the photography business, think about the future. And also time to just sit and not think, and just be.

    I’d forgotten how much I enjoy tinkering with a website. I couldn’t really do that in the same way with the Showit site since it was drag and drop. I was afraid when I started out the process on Friday night that maybe I’d forgotten, but I only had to look up how to do a couple of things. There’s even a dedicated subdomain just for the photography page of the site. Jared suggested the subdomain but I figured out how to do it and did it all by myself while he was at his conference, today.

    Now, the challenge will be to actually post content here. That will come. Occasionally, I am feeling like opening up, like I did with the “Making Peace with the Past” post. It took a lot to draft that post, and even more to leave it up.

    I’m not quite sure what has led me to be so guarded in recent years. Sure, there is a photography business to consider now, but I used to write with such abandon. I didn’t really care what people thought. Or maybe I did care, and I just wanted to say what I had to say anyway.

    Being guarded isn’t just an in-writing thing. I am guarded in person around most people who aren’t Jared. Jared is my safe person.

    I am working to change the being guarded thing. I want to let people in. It will just need to be a process. Baby steps.

    Love,
    Caroline