Sometimes i get nostalgic for the old ways, the old days even as I race forward headlong into the ever changing new that I can’t keep up with and wonder if I even really want to try anymore.

I remember the world before cell phones and computers and the internet.  I remember talking to a friend on the telephone, giggling in my parent’s living room though at the time, I thought of it as my living room.  We gave each other a prompt and a time limit and hung up and I raced over to my smith corona typewriter, pulling the sheet of paper through and typing madly in a rush to get my story down and then calling my friend back again so we could read each other our words.  I really did this and in some circles that makes me older than dirt and so does that expression.  Sometimes I think that was so limiting compared to the way I can now just come here and type away and hit post and you can read whatever I am going on about in your own time, in your own way.  But.  You know what I really miss – that connection of immediacy.  The way it felt as the words dripped off my tongue, my face hot and burning wondering how they would be heard.  There was an immediate vulnerability and an immediate connection. 

Last night as I was swimming, the lights from above creating a pattern of blues at the bottom of the pool, the bubbles from my deep breath outwards pushing through and upwards, I found myself feeling the stillness that comes from being truly in the moment.  I am sure that tears pricked my eyes and melded in with the other shades of blue even as the light dripped through me and burst me open. 

In this moment, I realized that more than anything, I crave those moments of stillness that come from being vulnerable to the immediacy of the moment.   They are everywhere and which a shake of my head, I also realize that I don’t have to live in the nostalgia of thinking that they only live in a past that drifts up over me in waves of remembrance every time I put pen to paper.  I am so grateful to those people who enter my life at just the right moments and help me to remember everything I need is already inside of me and that there are so many blessed opportunities to sink into the practice of creating stillness.

I am so incredibly grateful to the beautiful Kate who recently shared hers courageous self at her retreat in Italy and who will be again sharing herself at a weekend retreat on the Monterey Peninsula in Pacific Grove, California.  A place surrounded by the smells of cedar and eucalyptus, with the ocean just a ten-minute walk away in an environment that allows for the luxury of slowing down and sinking into yourself while enjoying comfort and the ocean’s heartbeat. 

I am thrilled to be going to assist her and to lead a photography workshop that focuses on creating stillness through our cameras, through the act of seeing and being present in the moment. 

I could talk on and on about why you should come but honestly, just go download, the free 42 page pdf filled with stillness practices:  here and then go and check out the details:  here 

I would love to spend some time with you as you take the time to shift your life.