It's Beautiful Here. Life in the eye of a hurricane.

The evening grows long and my home is full. Noise echoes off every wall, the sounds of teenage girls being teenage girls. I don't attempt to calm them even though I must wake early tomorrow for work. The laughter and giggles they make are sounds of joy, they can't be squelched, can't be bottled, and can't be denied. This noise, this disruption, this laughter must be breathed in, deeply. Embraced for what it is...this moment. Right now they are life!

The exhilaration of deeply breathing crisp, clean, cold air on a winter evening is only made better by catching snow flakes in the camera flash. I use simple adventure and discovery as a mechanism to change my attitude and outlook...on the spot. We are snowflakes.   Photo: January 2, 2012. Included in  It's Beautiful Here. A year in the eye of hurricane. 

I was exposed to a 'picture a day' project by a friend from Florida. I don't particularly recall following her daily posts, which I believe she did on facebook, but I do recall thinking 'that's an intriguing exercise.' Shortly after Mary died, I realized that I needed an exercise. I needed daily reinforcement to keep me focused on the most important work going on my life, raising my children. I also understood that while I was going to struggle with her loss in many ways, for a long time, I recognized at the same time that I was very lucky man. Every journey begins with a single step. On January 1, 2012, I took a picture of a wind chime singing on my patio. I honestly had no plan or idea where this one picture would take me.

Welcome to my hurricane. It’s beautiful here. I became the widowed father of four children late in October 2011; one in college, one in high school, one in middle school and one in elementary school. Mary's death was not a surprise, she'd been battling an aggressive form of breast cancer for three years, yet I was unprepared to deal with the reality of her passing, in too many ways to count. I don't believe I was alone in this lack of preparedness. In general, our culture is not good with death and there are many reasons why. But, I have and continue to focus on staying as positive as possible. We are presented many choices to make each a day, and the way we choose has a profound effect on shaping our world and the opportunities in it. I try to start every day by making my first choice a positive one. I choose to greet each morning with the promise to celebrate the wonderful, magical, and incredible life I am living. I choose ...