2012…the year in review, (for me)….

First off, Merry Christmas everyone. As I sit here reflecting on the past 12 months, I realize it’s been quite a ride.

Another year has gone by with the love of my life. I cherish all the time we get to spend together and look forward to much more. With that being said, that time was almost cut VERY short. As most of you may already know I suffered a  heart attack in August. I was having the signs and symptoms for a few weeks prior, but went unchecked because of my lack of medical insurance at the time. Well common sense took over and I went to the hospital at 5am on that fateful morning to find out my main artery to my heart was 55% blocked. 2 stents later I’m currently fine. 2013 will bring about some changes in diet and lifestyle so I can hopefully be around alot longer.

I also got my dream job this year too. I’ve always wanted to be a photographer and now I’m doing it full time. What started out as a hobby is now my way of life and I’m happier doing that than anything else!

Alot of people have come and gone from my life as well. Some will be missed, others not so much.

As I look back over the year one message stands out most. Don’t take life, or anyone in your life for granted. Live each day to the best of your ability. Love yourself. Because if you don’t, you can’t love anyone else. Take the time to tell someone you love them, because in the blink of an eye that opportunity may not ever be there again.

So not just today, but everyday, MAKE the opportunity to hug someone you love tight and tell them how much they mean, just in case tomorrow never comes….

Immortality…

The Cloud is just the internet. And the internet is just a bunch of hard drives.

The internet is really good at replicating discrete bits of self-contained data. There are probably a few million copies of any given Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire or Cher song out on all the hard drives of the world, because lots of people care about Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire or Cher.

But my photos only live on a few hard drives in the world. The hard drives in the database servers. The hard drives in the networked-attached storage devices that are used to backup the database servers. A few of the pictures are on my friends’ hard drives, but not most of them, and certainly not the complete collection.

When I die my account will expire and a large percentage of my photos—artwork, friends, family, vacations, my dog—will disappear from public view. They’ll sit on hard drives until the hosting company goes out of business or loses the data.

Someone might send the hosting company my death certificate, prove that I’m gone. The hosting company might even give them access to those photos, should one of my friends even think to gain it. But more likely no one will even think to look. Part of my trivial legacy, my ‘immortality’ will go dark, sleeping quietly on a handful of hard drives.

8/31/2011

 

“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. ”

 Nathaniel Hawthorne

5/25/2011

“For me, photographs take their power from memory and emotion. A picture tells its own story, shaped by the mood or insights of the person you are at the time you see it. It becomes layered with the past and the present. It need not be of people you know: if a photograph is powerful, you enter it the moment it was taken. All that emerges from your observation becomes your own.”

– Sharon J. Wohlmuth

4/23/2011

“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”

Happy Easter 2011

4/22/2011

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.”

–  Anne Frank

4/20/2011

“We should so live and labor in our times that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This expresses the true spirit in the love of mankind.”

– Henry Ward Beecher

4/10/2011

“Cheerfulness removes the rust from the mind, lubricates our inward machinery, and enables us to do our work with fewer creaks and groans. If people were universally cheerful, probably there wouldn’t be half the quarreling or a tenth part of the wickedness”

– Unknown

4/3/2011

Joy Ride

 

“You have to die because no soul has passed

The heavenly threshold since you have opened school,

But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;

And they are lonely that must keep the watch.”

– William Butler Yeats

4/1/2011

“All the water in the world, however hard it tries, can never sink the smallest ship unless it gets inside, and all the evil in the world, the blackest kind of sin, can never hurt you in the least, unless you let it in”