questions

 This school year sure started out with a bang. My husband, Ayron, and I moved right before we got married in August, and then we went straight on to start classes for our final year of our masters. I took the moments in early summer for granted while they were happening. Things were so much slower then. I spent a lot of time just recording small moments, like the night that my Mom and I went on a walk after supper to our family farm and I brought my camera along, where I snapped a few photos of our free-range hens scavenging for scraps out in the grass. I remember the quiet of that night. I can feel the warmth of May in Iowa. I can imagine how silent it is there, and I want to find that zen and that silence now.

I know that both Ayron and I feel anxiety about the year ahead. Where will we be headed after we graduate? Will either of us get singing jobs? If we don't what's next? I wonder what will happen if my photography business continues to take off? Will I need to make a choice between the two at some point? Right now I feel so overwhelmed (but in a good way) with living a divided life between singing, being a student, teaching my wonderful students, and being a photographer. Sometimes I worry that if I keep going full throttle in all four, that I'm going to have trouble succeeding at one to the level that I want.

But then I look at the photographs below, and I remember why I took them. To bring myself back to remember that no matter what happens, there is quiet beauty all around us. And no matter what happens, I always have a place to come back to, both within myself and outside of myself.

I think it is going to be alright.