holidays

At Year’s End

At Year's End

Is there a word for “guilt over not making something?” I’m sure there’s a German word out there that expresses this sentiment perfectly: That feeling of remorse for not making or doing anything in a while. 

There’s productivity guilt, but that’s not exactly the same thing. I’m talking hobbies and interests, not work. 

Here at the year’s end, that’s been me. Sure, I make photographs all the time. But I feel guilty for not having any big projects in the works. I have ideas, but I always have ideas.

Instead, I have to tell myself it’s okay to take a break. Recharge my batteries. Start anew.

My bet is that once I start again, it’ll be hard to stop. 

Have a great, safe holiday season and a very happy new year.

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Lost Kitten

Usually we don’t get out to the Christmas tree farm until much later – sometimes right at dark. But the last few years we’ve made it a point to get there before the sun sets.

All that sunshine didn’t stop Madelyn from losing her stuffed kitten somewhere on the lot. We made a trip back to look for it, but no luck. That little orange Beanie Baby was lost in a forest of evergreens.

Then we got a call from the tree farm: they found the kitten.

Guess what will appear in Madelyn’s stocking this Christmas?

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Before the Break

Sure, it’s nice – getting a week between Christmas and New Year’s off as a freebie vacation week. That week is one of the many benefits of working in higher ed.

Except when you’re sick.

It hit us the weekend before Christmas: a scratch throat, a groggy unease, and sinus pain that felt like continual just-before-you-sneeze agony. Then, from Christmas day to just this week, a persistent sickness. It didn’t ruin the holidays, but it certainly wasn’t fun.

Maybe it’s a good thing I had that week off. But there are better ways to spend a vacation than homebound misery.

So I took the usual Christmas morning photos of the kids opening presents. Other than that, and despite some big photo plans I had, I just didn’t get much done. Instead, I’ll share some pre-Christmas fun in the playroom with the kids.

Before the snow fell. Before the presents showed up under the tree. Before the misery.

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Year After Year

O Holy Day [Explored]

Every year, I give a simple gift to my side of the family: a calendar of full-page photos from the previous year, showing all the kids in the family doing their thing. Easter, summer, Halloween, birthdays – it’s all in there.

And every year, the calendars are a hit.

I’ve been giving photo calendars since before I had kids of my own – probably five years or longer – and there’s no gift that makes a splash like they do. My family tears them open, thumbs through the photos, and remembers the year that was. You’d think they’d get old (“Another calendar? C’mon, Dave.”), but they don’t.

What keeps them fresh? We keep adding family members. That means new birthdays get added to the calendar portion, and new photos of new people appear up top. I added a kiddo to this year (Riley, in April). Family variety, in photo form.

“Sometimes I’ll take out the photos and frame them,” someone told me this year. What a nice thought: an 11×16″ photo worthy of a hanging on the wall for longer than a month.

I often feel like I’m taking the easy gift route for Christmas, giving away family photos year after year. But you know, they’re never not appreciated. I think it’s the variety thing, but I also think it’s because no one prints photos anymore, so any picture of a grandkid that one can hold is a true gift.

We can share our photo talents so easily starting with the ones we love.

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Holiday Break

I’m lucky to work in higher education, where the week between Christmas and the new year are seen as an automatic holiday. This year, I took a few extra days before Christmas off, meaning a lot of time at home with the family.

What did we do? Not much. A bit of repair work on my car, some house showings, a couple of sick kids to contend with, and the busy back-and-forth of family holiday time. I was able to dig into a few photo books – Alex Webb’s The Suffering of Light was a nice Christmas gift – and think about my creative work for 2017.

But mostly, it was just what I had hoped for: quiet time, doing quiet things.

Happy New Year.

 

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