A Picture Is Worth … [Fill In The Blank]

Yes, I Did Stop To Smell Them.

​I’ve made mention once or twice my job is stressful. When a good part of the day is spent listening to complaints, it doesn’t leave me feeling like “Wow! I can’t wait to get to work today!” it’s more like, “Is it 4:30 on Friday yet?” And I ask that question when I wake up on Monday morning. 

I’m working on changing careers, and it is slowly progressing, but for the time being, I’m not changing jobs.

I won’t lie; my attitude hasn’t been where it should for several months. I grumble and grouse a lot. Getting up in the morning has been a challenge, which definitely explains why I oversleep so much.
 
I knew I needed to turn my attitude around, so I gave myself a challenge: Instead of going through the day with the proverbial blinders on, I had to take them off, find something beautiful, and take a picture of it.
 
You should know I work in a hospital and it’s a pretty antiseptic environment, so this was going to be extra challenging. It didn’t take me long to see there wasn’t much inside the hospital worth snapping, but outside proved to be a different matter. There were trees, tree buds, flowers – there was a lot of life and color outside.  

One day last week, for example, it was lightly raining on the way to the building. The tree out front of said building had pinkish flower sprays on it, and the raindrops on the leaves looked like little jewels.

​People see me with my phone pointed at something and ask what I’m looking at and when I say ‘the bird in the tree,’ they just walk away. It’s fine, it’s their choice whether to look at it or not.
 
Many of these pictures get posted to my Instagram account, but some don’t. Sometimes the phone can’t capture exactly what I see. I never post what I think will get liked, I post something I like and share it because someone else might like it too.
 
This new way of looking at things has carried over to my home life. My apartment faces the east and every morning I look at the sunrise – and I’ve taken many pictures of it because it can be breathtaking. And on the way home from work, I stopped to take a picture of some lilacs – and yes, I did stop to smell them; there is no scent comparable to lilacs.
 
This exercise has been relatively easy, mostly because it’s spring in Minnesota. With all the rain we’ve had recently, it’s so green and lush. If it were the middle of January, with snow on the ground and temperatures in the 5,000 below range, I’d feel differently.
 
What ultimately matters is that exercise is working. When I think of looking for something beautiful I’m not seeing the negatives about the job.
 
Funny how that works.

Below are a few of the pictures I’ve taken and posted to Instagram since the exercise started.