Select Page
Carpe Diem Failure

Carpe Diem Failure

by | Aug 27, 2008 | Walking Down the Gravel Road

In one of my blog entries last week, I crowed about my initial success at seizing the day. But I must report that since then all my attempts at day seizing have been complete and utter failures.

On my walk a few mornings after my carpe diem masterstroke, a downy looking bird lay still and limp on the asphalt beside my neighbor’s driveway. My first thought was, “Get a picture.” My second thought was, “You don’t have your camera,” and my third was, “Jolene, you’re sick. You just posted a dead frog picture. People don’t want to see a dead bird.” I assured myself that the bird wasn’t worth seizing and walked on.

But on my return trip, the little bird was sitting upright and breathing fast. “Now this,” I thought, “could turn into a zippy, chirpy blog entry about overcoming hardships and clinging to hope.” So I walked home, strapped on my camera bag and went back to photography Tweety. When I got there, Tweety had flown the coop, and all I got was a picture of bare asphalt, a sort of seize-the-day/take-the-camera visual reminder.

Yesterday morning I crossed the little bridge and heard a slight rustle ahead. I looked up to see a baby fawn standing on the road not ten feet away. Once again, I didn’t have my camera. The fawn leaped away and joined her mother and sibling by the stream.

The seizing failures were mounting at an alarming rate, and I vowed to remember my camera this morning, which I did. No wildlife, healthy or injured, made an appearance, but rain clouds were moving in. At one point, a rainbow tried to form, but it was a pathetic little glimmer of a thing. Besides I was anticipating my mammogram and physical, both of which create more of a squeeze than seize mentality, so I kept walking.

By the way, mammograms are now digital, but I forgot to ask the rad tech if she would email them to me so I could post them on my blog. So add another tick in the carpe diem failure column. Or put one in the thank God for small favors box, depending on your point of view. In fact, put two ticks in the thank God box. Because I forgot to take my camera to the mammogram appointment too. For that, we are all exceeding grateful.

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem

by | Aug 20, 2008 | Walking Down the Gravel Road

Seize the day is not my motto. Plan the day is. I love a daily routine. I make lists in my planner and find great satisfaction – one of my friends says too much satisfaction – in checking things off as I complete them.

But yesterday I seized the day. As I walked down the driveway, I nearly bonked into a caterpillar that dangled, on an invisible thread, from a walnut tree. “Wish I had my camera,” I thought and continued on my way. But the caterpillar kept bugging me. When I saw another one down the road a bit, dangling from a neighbor’s tree, I knew this was the time of year for whatever it was to be doing whatever it does.

So I seized the day and picked up my camera when my laps took me near the house. I took several shots and was a little frustrated by camera shake as usual. An hour later, determined to seize the day again, I threw my camera and tripod in the back seat of the car. On the way to the grocery store, I stopped to get some less shaky shots.

Here’s the really good part. A slight breeze had risen, and the little caterpillar, dangling from a thread I wouldn’t have trusted for a second, swayed back and forth. My lens could not focus on the dot of fluff, and all the pictures were of a nicely focused tree trunk with a white blob in front of it. My earlier photos were much better, and the very first one was the best one of the lot.

Talk about instant gratification on my first try at seizing the day. Of course, I really only seized the moment which I think was a pretty good first step, and I’m determined to keep seizing. My planner is pretty full, I will pencil in an hour for seizing in September, then a half-day in October and and a whole day in November – maybe Thanksgiving Day since it’s a holiday.

I’m getting the hang of this spontaneity business. If somebody had told me how to plan it, I’d have started much sooner.