The delicate act of balancing work and life, a nice day for a walk to get away from it all. May 19,2021

 

The past few weeks maybe months have been a whirlwind

of change for me.  My manager left, and then I took over her

spot.  I've been doing tons of training and learning.

I have also been training people to do different jobs that I used to do.

My lovely schedule of always having Monday and Tuesday off disappeared

and for awhile I was stuck working Monday through Friday.

I know most people would love a Monday through Friday 6:30 to 

3pm job.  I actually like to work the weekends and have

Monday and Tuesday off with my husband.

Things are finally coming back into balance.  I am proud that

I did not revert to my bad stress eating habits of

grabbing a Pepsi and eating chips or other bad food choices.

I  did have some bad exercise weeks, but I'm slowly getting

back to my five days of walking and starting on my

other strength exercises. ( I think these little ducks are so cute, I love 

the black lines near their eyes.)

I think the reason I was always hesitant about taking another management

job was I knew that it's hard to balance work and home life.

I so enjoy the time with my husband that I was a bit worried about how

that would change. When I  am a manager I give a huge amount of 

my time to my job.

I'm glad I spent 5 years not in a manager position, learning

how important spending time out with my husband is. 

We both talked about how we were missing our day dates the last few weeks.

So today we got out and walked the Provo River path by

the Bridal Veil falls.  I've tried a new photography thing,

Photographing fish.  What type of fish is this?

We spent the morning walking, bird watching and fish watching.

I felt all the stress and tension of the past few weeks slip away.

The work world was left far behind, and it was

just me, my husband and the great beautiful outdoors.

I think it funny to watch the ducks, I wonder what they

are eating down in the water.

This was such a cool bird to watch.

They flew around and then dove into the water.

I so wanted to see them catch a fish.

There were lots of trees in bloom.

It was a very sunny beautiful day, thus the squinty eyes. I should

have worn sunglasses.

Here are the falls.  I think there were some people climbing them.

How do balance life and work? 

I look forward to more Mondays off soon.

I need to plan some fun summer adventures.

G.G.

How To Get Really Good Bird Photos...Take lots of awful ones.

How do you get a really awesome photo?  

Some people spend lots of money on big cameras,

Some people take lots of photography classes.

I take lots and lots of really bad photos.

Yes you read that correctly.

I take really bad photos all the time.  

I think I realized this as I have started to go through 

my photography and organize it. 

I don't own the most expensive camera.

I don't really understand the inner workings of 

my camera.  It is a pretty basic point and shoot

camera with a good zoom lens.

I have a lot of photos that look like the one above.

I think there is part of a bird in it.

I did take a photography course way back in high school.

Back in the dark ages where you developed your own film in a dark room.

I have had more complex cameras, but I find 

my camera that I own right now gets 

photos that I enjoy looking at. 

Photography for me is a fun hobby. 

I go walking with my husband,

and just enjoy tying to get a good photo of the 

things we see as we are out and about.

I think this bird has something to say.

This is probably how far from me the bird was.

This is me zooming in from the house on the birds at

my bird feeder.

Look at this disaster of a photo. I think

another bird flew by.

When you are photographing ducks you get a lot of 

photos of them with their heads under the water.

Trying to zoom in on the birds that are really very far away.

Run, run that person is staring at us.

I'm not good at getting bird photos as they are about to fly.

What you want me to focus on something 

out there?   As my camera auto focuses for

me sometimes it just doesn't know what to focus on.

Another blurry photos.

It figured it out!  Now if the bird would just do a better pose for me.

Sometimes the birds just want to clean themselves.

I guess I'm glad birds don't walk around wanting to take

photos of me.  Excuse me could you not photograph me

while I'm preening.

It's kind of amazing how he is bending his neck.

These birds are very hard to get a photo of, they

don't keep their beaks out of  the water much.

Is there a bird in this photo.  I think

I kept trying to run ahead of this one, it swam fast.

This is how far the heron are from me when I take their photos.

It's hard to zoom in and get a good photo, and keep my arms from shaking.

Sometimes I can zoom in and get a good photo.

Many times my photos look like this.

I like this photo, just wish the one cattail was

not right in front of the bird.

This is the bird that made me realize just how many photos

I will take to get a good photo.

I have a lot of it with it's head under the water.

Just about to go under?  Or just coming back up?

This one is pretty good.

I like this one, I will edit it a little so the bird is more centered.

You can just tell that there is a fluffy little bird in this photo. I zoomed in too much.

I kind of like this photo, something about the different textures.

More window watching photos.  This is the little bird that eats dandelion seeds.

I have to find out what bird this is, I need a whole flock of them

to clean up my yard.

Finally a nice photo.  Do you know what bird this is?

I enjoyed watching it out my front yard window.

Well I hoped you enjoyed looking at my horrible photography.

You always just see peoples best photos on facebook and instagram.

I wanted to show that for every good photo, there are really lots of bad ones.

Just keep enjoying the process.

G.G.