Rat Race

Each morning that I work my alarm goes off at 5 am, I groan and roll over to hit the snooze button. I generally get out of bed before it goes off again, but I rarely enjoy the experience. On the flip side of this coin are the days that I DO NOT work. I rarely sleep past 4am and awaken without any assistance from that stupid clock. When I do set an alarm for my days off it is generally set for 3am or earlier in order to get to whichever spot I have chosen to photograph prior to sunrise. This is all in an attempt to not miss the "golden hour" of photogenic light. I do not find it at all painful to rise this early on my blissful mornings off in fact it is quite the opposite.

Several years ago I made a New Years resolution to see at least 80% of the sunrises that year. The entire year I think I may have missed only a handful of them. There is something that is so peaceful to me about greeting the new day in quiet solitude. Often we let our lives and responsibilities get in the way of those small moments of peace that we can find from just getting up a few minutes earlier. Think about how much more productive your day might be if did not need to begin each day racing against the clock. Do you begin your days stressed out because you have 90 minutes worth of morning routine to fit into 70 minutes of available time? Do you let your children get away with "5 more minutes" until they are running out the door half dressed chasing after the school bus? Do you run around like a crazy person trying to find your keys/shoes/pants ect every morning? Think about the peace that could come from giving yourself 15 extra minutes each day. What would you do with that time? Would you read the paper and actually SIT DOWN to have breakfast? Would you take your coffee to your front porch and watch the sunrise? Would you just take a moment to breathe or maybe even show up for work on time?

Our planet wakes slowly. She starts with the lightening silver gray of pre dawn and works her way into a fiery display of reds and oranges. If you are lucky enough to catch her on a day where the clouds hang in the sky she will DAZZLE you with beauty. Try not to miss this life affirming display by letting your rat race get in the way.

Conflict management

Continuing with our management skills project... this week I though about conflict management and resolution. It has been a rough week to be a leader in an emergency room. We remained very busy all week and our staff is weary. We have had an ER full of really sick people and we all pulled together to do a really great job taking care of them. No real conflict to resolve there. Where I do have conflict sometimes is in my own mind. I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to get out and take some shots. I set the alarm so that I could again be in position for the golden hour around sunrise... filled the tank with gas and realized I had NO IDEA where I wanted to go... let the conflict begin. I began driving north... then changed my mind and turned west... then changed my mind again and turned east... by the time I got out of town I had missed an exquisitely beautiful sunrise that comes only from a mostly cloudy sky. I knew I had missed my chance for a great shot because the mostly cloudy sky that makes for a great sunrise makes for an overcast day and I am just the kind of great photographer that can turn a cloudy day into a great photo... YET. So I hit shuffle on my music and decided I would just go for a drive to see what I could see. I found myself driving out of town toward the Parhanghat Valley about an hour outside of Las Vegas.

Let me just say... I love the desert and have always been drawn to it. I love the vegetation and the rock formations and would not trade where I live... but sometimes it is nice to see the color green that only comes from moist nitrogen rich soil. So I sat by the lake for about an hour and took some shots and again let my mind wander. I got some good stuff and scoped out some future sites but most importantly my inability to resolve the conflicts in my own mind I was able to find to peace to quiet that mind long enough to hear natures morning song... and I saw a BEAVER!!! (I think)... stop the snickering :)

Time Management

In keeping with the leadership skills line of thought I thought I would talk this week about time management. Anyone who knows me very well knows that I find myself frustrated QUITE often. It seems as though I am always finding something fun that I do not have time to do. Recently that something has been my photography. I am in a very demanding graduate program... I find myself needing to go into work for something almost every single day... (it has become a bit of an inside joke in fact my last day off I found myself in there 3 different times). There is always a meeting to attend or a schedule to pick up or drop off or a class I need to take. I write things in my calendar and each level of task priority has its own assigned color... RED for high priority, BLUE for mid level priority and GREEN for things I need to get done but it does not have to be today. I find that most of my tasks end up to be written in RED and I often find myself wondering "how the heck am I going to get all of this done today?" But my photography is never in RED... in fact it rarely makes it to the list at all. Well the other day I made a point of putting it on the list... IN RED! As a mater of fact it was the ONLY thing that was on my list that day. I set my alarm for 3:30 AM so I could be sure to catch sunrise and the golden hour. I got up threw on some deodorant and clothing made a cuppa coffee grabbed my gear and hit the road. It had been raining off and on for a few days so there was hope that the cloud patterns might make for a captivating shot. I headed out in the dark for a place I seldom get a chance to go but decided on this day that would be my destination. I found my spot just in time for the sun to start warming up the sky and sat waiting... and waiting... and waiting. It ended up the sun and cloud cover did NOT make for a captivating shot... they made for a gradual easing into the day that often happens when the sun never peaks through the clouds. I continued to sit there camera in lap... listening to the birds as they began their day... watching the bats return from a night of keeping our desert somewhat bug free... listening to the silence you find when you have chosen to beat the rest of the world to their day. I found myself so relaxed that I did not even care that my photos were not spectacular. As it turned out I should not necessarily have entered photography in red on my date book but rather "connect to self by disconnecting from all of the MUST DO's" I learned a great deal about time management on that day... it turns out that when you make the time for yourself your desire to make time for others increases.
Take the time to stop and listen to the symphony that plays all around you everyday while you are rushing to complete your 'Tasks"