Instagram mingling

This past weekend I attended my first Instagram Meetup here in Toronto. It’s not my first time meeting online acquaintances out in the “real world” but still I was feeling a little nervous. Well, maybe not nervous but I guess I was feeling kind of awkward about it. So that’s why I brought my daughter along with me so I wouldn’t feel so awkward all alone.

Caught ‘gramming

It turns out that there was nothing at all to feel awkward about. We met up at the Historic Distillery District here in Toronto, whose old brick buildings and cobblestone paths scream to be photographed. There are interesting things to see all over, from old whiskey barrels, to antique trucks and machinery. Even better, it was so great to put faces to names of Instagrammer’s that I have been following for a long time. I also met some new IG friends which is fabulous.

Barrels full of spirits (get it? Old empty liquor barrels…haha)

I had such a great time mingling and “talking shop” about different photography and editing apps and so on. It was also really nice to hang out with other people who enjoy iPhone photography and having a creative outlet in our 9 to 5 lives.

We walked around all afternoon in this interesting and very photogenic location, but I was lucky to get two shots to share. Kind of funny to go home from an Instagram meetup with hardly any photos taken. I was too busy mingling!

Follow me on Instagram: @bearheartwoman

Some thoughts about being a Mother

To be really honest, most days I feel like a terrible mother. I drop my kids off late to school more often than I would like to admit. Our laundry gets cleaned but rarely gets put away in the proper drawers. Digging in the basket for a pair of matching socks in the morning is as routine as brushing teeth in my house.

And speaking of teeth, my kids may go to school with mismatched socks but they have excellent dental health so that’s one thing I will pat myself on the back for.

My kids are also pretty amazing. My daughter, at the age of ten, is tall and beautiful and very smart. She has this incredibly dry sense of humour for a girl of her age which she inherits from her dad. My son, the class clown, is big and strong and great at problem solving. He also says and does the funniest things and despite his size, he is soft and gentle.

When Mother’s Day rolls around, I always think that it should be me doing something to show them how much I love them. They have taught me so much about life and about myself and they put up with the mismatched socks, messy living room and rushed mornings. I’m not the mom who is always there to pick them up from school, bring them to swimming practice or watch them compete in the track and field competition. I’m the mom who goes to work all day and then drags them down to the lake in the evening to take pictures. They happily oblige me when I get one of them to stand very still in front of me so I can rest my iPhone on their head to take a picture – human tripods lol

Today I am reminded of how grateful I am to have these two amazing little persons in my life. I’m definitely not perfect (they know that for a fact), but they still love me forever and unconditionally, mismatched socks and all.

The colour of my emotions

Photo taken by me with an iPhone 5. Edited in Lightroom 4.

Follow me on Instagram: @bearheartwoman or on EyeEm: @callmeSheBear

Spring is blossoming

I don’t have much to say today.

We saw Iron Man 3 on Friday night. It was full of action and big explosions and Robert Downey Jr. is pretty cool.

Yesterday we went to a lovely picnic birthday party.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are in the playoffs, finally.

I have Monday off work so I get a three-day weekend.

Today we are going to the market.

The Sakura cherry blossoms in High Park are in full bloom. Everyone is happy, and so am I.

Being simple is complicated

It is a beautiful day today. The sun is shining, the sky is blue with a nice mix of light clouds. I bet there will be a great sunset tonight for photos. But, I’m not feeling so enthusiastic about that right now.

Today I am frustrated and discouraged. My husband and I have this crazy dream to move to Costa Rica and live a more simple life, which I have mentioned here before and have only been talking about it FOREVER. Another alternative to that would be to move to a smaller city, bigger house, and spend more time together as a family. I would be very happy with either of those outcomes. However, it seems life is conspiring to keep us where we are and I am getting frustrated, antsy and incredibly restless.

I won’t get into details, but there have been a few things that have come up in recent weeks that make leaving the city more challenging. It mostly has to do with my husbands work, my children’s schooling and my own conflicting feelings of leaving my career when we do move. There are some other factors that are out of our control which means we just have to wait and see what happens. I know this is all very vague, but that’s all I can say.

Years ago, when I first moved to Toronto, I was taking the train up north to go visit my family for Christmas. I was single at that time, new to the city and my intentions were to stay here for a few years, get some work experience and move someplace else – West Coast was on my radar. I sat next to a very nice lady on the train and we talked for almost the entire five-hour train ride. She told me that when she was my age (early 20′s at the time) she too had plans to only stay in the city for a few years. Those few years turned into thirty years and she told me that as time went on, it got harder for her to change her lifestyle and leave, so she didn’t. She seemed happy enough however I will never forget the tinge of regret I heard in her voice. Recalling that conversation makes me fret.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Toronto. It’s a great city, but I need a change in lifestyle and I doubt that staying here will be the best place for that. Just when I think we are making some progress and getting closer to making that happen, some new challenge comes up and puts us back to square one. There are so many factors to juggle, decisions to be made and of course the needs of our kids to consider. My head is a jumbled mess of thoughts and worries about doing what is best for my family.

Heh. I can’t help but laugh at myself and the irony of all this. It seems the joke is on me.  Our road to the simple life is turning out to be way more complicated than I ever expected.

 

All photos are my own taken and edited with various apps on my iPhone5. Follow me on Instagram: @bearheartwoman and on EyeEm: @callmeshebear

Share and share alike

 

Photo taken by me with my iPhone3Gs, shared on Instagram. @bearheartwoman

Thanks everyone for all your support yesterday. I felt incredibly vulnerable after publishing yesterdays post, but today I am so glad I did. I feel better.

In other news, I have had a few people kindly ask me if they could use my images on their blogs to accompany their posts, so I thought it would be a good idea to make my thoughts on that topic clear and write a post about it.

I have absolutely no problem with anyone who wants to use any of my images that I post here for personal use. Whether you would like to use a particular image for your personal blog post, pin it on your Pinterest, share it on Facebook just because you like it, or even use my image as your screen saver, that is fine with me and I am flattered that you enjoy my photos. I have licensed all my photos under a Creative Commons – Non commercial – No derivatives license which basically means that you are free to share my work for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit me, link back to my blog and don’t make any changes to the original image.

I feel a little pompous for posting this because I am a HUGE AMATEUR, but it is a topic I started thinking about after I received a few requests to use my images on personal blogs, and some other people warned me about being too liberal in sharing my work so freely because of thieves.

Here’s what I think…

My entire motivation for having this blog is to support my desire to create and share. Taking photos and writing are creative activities that I enjoy immensely. I enjoy my time  that I go out to take photos, to edit them, and to write my thoughts down to accompany them. In my view, creation is incomplete without sharing. When other people express to me that they enjoy my work so much that they would also like to share it, it is icing on the cake and makes me very happy. Please do share and I will also share others whose creative output inspires me and I will credit and link back to you and I expect the same in return. It’s like an honour system.

I am not a professional nor do I make any money off of what I do here, so I’m the first to acknowledge that this is probably really easy for me to say. The only sure way to protect your work from thieves on the internet is to not share it online. Even when you put watermarks on your photos, a thief can easily crop it or smudge it out. Frustrating, wrong and unfair? Yes it is indeed and it’s a crappy realization to know there are jack asses out there who will take your work and try to pawn it off as their own, and even worse try to make a buck off of it. I don’t like it either. It is maddening and soul  sucking.

However, when my efforts to prevent thieves from stealing my work trumps my desire to express myself creatively and share…well, that is something that does not feel good to me and I don’t feel like going down that road. My creative time is too important to me to let it become all about them and not about me. I realize that I am a huge idealist, but I’m not stupid and I have carefully thought this through. This is what feels good for me. If it turns out that this approach does not work, then I will change it.

Yesterday I wrote about my doubts of having spiritual faith in the world, God and the universe. Today I realize I do still have some faith. I have faith in humanity. I believe that there are more good people than bad in the world, even on the big bad internet. My experience tells  me that these good people have good intentions and will happily share creative work that inspires them, with proper attribution. I believe that some of these people will also pay money to the artists for the privilege of having their art hang in their homes or offices. I trust that if those people happen to come across my work or yours that is not shared in an honourable way, that they will let us know. And I promise you this – you can have faith in me  that I will do the same thing in return.

Faith-quake

Photo taken my me with an iphone5 using the Olloclip macro lens.

It’s been almost four months since she died. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her, a conversation we had, a personal disclosure she entrusted to me, an appointment I drove her to and the last lunch we had together. I think of her courage, her challenges, her failures, disappointments and despite it all she still had hope for a better life. I think of her two orphaned children who on the few times I have seen them after their mother’s death, were wearing hand me downs that I gave to them from my own children…and it still hurts.

I have experienced many deaths in my family. Last year alone I attended three funerals but I never felt the kind of grief that was brought on by Lisa’s sudden, mysterious and untimely death. There are rare days when I almost forget about the vacancy her death has left in me, and then something pops up to remind me that it’s still there – unprocessed, unresolved and raw as ever. As is my way, I have not spoken with anyone about my feelings, instead choosing to deal with my grief privately. But after this amount of time, it’s not going away and I don’t know how to reconcile my conflicting feelings on my own.

I have lost faith in the world and without that, I am floundering. I want to believe in something bigger than me, something incomprehensible, an all loving, non judging, universal energy that supports me and all of us…but I am afraid to place my trust in the universe, in life. Anger has numbed me and Fear has filled my heart. Maybe for some people it would be an easy choice to move on from this and abandon all spiritual beliefs, but for me it’s difficult and I have no idea which side of this I am going to come out on.

Last Friday at work, I had a bit of a meltdown in a team meeting and before I could stop myself I was admitting to my co-workers that although I have respect for traditional ways and ceremonies (I work for an Aboriginal, culture based agency), I wasn’t sure if I truly believed in them and that I was still struggling with the death of my client. Being Aboriginal myself, I felt like I was a traitor and betraying my entire race with my doubts, but the responses I got back surprised me. “I understand…I have been there too…I have experienced the same…It’s okay…” I cried and couldn’t stop and for the first time in the last four months, I felt like I could fully breathe again.

I still don’t know how I am going to come out of this and what exactly my personal beliefs about the world are. I do know that I feel better for opening up to my co-workers, some of whom are long time friends and “traditional people”.

I once heard Lisa say to another person who was struggling and feeling afraid to ask for help, “It’s okay, everybody needs some help sometimes”. I’m taking those words to heart and realizing that today is a good time as any for me to reach out, express my grief and ask for some help in processing it.

Shameless self-promotion and a favour to ask…

It’s kind of funny, I feel really good and enthusiastic about sharing my work, but when it comes to promoting it – not so much. I’m far too shy and humble, so I’m stepping out of my comfort zone here…

Since a couple of people have asked and encouraged me, I wanted to let you all know that my Instagram photos are available to purchase as canvas or framed prints from Instacanvas. They also print greeting cards and iphone cases. I don’t have a lot of photos in there, but I will be maintaining my gallery more often and adding new photos that I feel are good ones for printing. Unfortunately, Instacanvas only offers prints in the square Instagram format. Personally, I prefer the landscape format but I haven’t yet found a place to offer prints for those ones. I’ll work on that and keep you updated.

Also, I have entered the photo you see below to be selected for the weekly Instacanvas Featured Artists on the homepage. This is where I need your help. If you feel so inclined, please click on the photo below and vote for me – that is if you feel it is worthy of being amongst the Featured Artists. I would really appreciate it!

That’s all for now, and I hope you have a fabulous day!