What is your truth?

Is this a question you ask yourself? If we say that your truth is shorthand for living with authenticity: living in a way so that you are comfortable with your choices and actions, and that you also reflect upon and learn from those behaviours that you are not comfortable with. Are you living your truth?

Such a life choice requires great courage and vulnerability. It requires you to be honest with yourself, to accept that there may be things that you are avoiding, things that you are attached to being a certain way and things that you may be just plain confused about. If we are to consider our thoughts, habits and behaviours about these things, as part of our attempt to live our truth, then we require courage and vulnerability.

Courage and vulnerability seem to go hand in hand. For if we are to be courageous and address something that we find difficult this creates a vulnerable place for us. In facing our difficulties we are admitting that we have not got it all right, and our ego is not going to accept that easily.

Rather than distract ourselves with activity, or go inwards and attempt think our way through the challenge, or just pretend that nothing has changed and carry on. Sometimes we need to just stop. To give ourselves space for all the stuff swirling about to settle. I do not mean disengage from life. Perhaps it is more of a filtering. To continue those activities that support our ability to be with the change: the friends that understand us; the quietness that allows thoughts and feelings to emerge unbidden; the joy of a new experience. These things root us in ourselves. Allow us to be everything that we can be.

I feel the need to stop. To rest a little from the busy-ness. There is a lot changing in my life and I need a little time to allow it all to settle. I will continue the personal and supportive creative projects I am currently engaged with, but I am going to rest awhile from some other commitments.

My Photential newsletter is one of those commitments I am going to stop for a while. Much of my work around mindful photography has been developmental and shared through this new website. I am still keeping this going, but I am going to give myself a little more space for reflective practices. I am currently writing a book about Mindful Photography and my life experience of the last ten years; this is part of adjusting to that period and the place I find my self now. I am also following a seasonal year long photography project called 7 Days To Save Your Life, which is a visual exploration of this period of change and adjustment.

So there will be no newsletter for a while – I am thinking a couple of months at least. However, there will be the occasional blog post here. I am going away next month for 3 weeks, to visit family in Canada, so this feels the perfect time to be making these decisions.