I have set for myself a project I planned to accomplish with two years. The plan was to learn creative writing, learn a new language. And become more than an occasional photographer. To that end, I joined Meetup and attended a few meetings geared towards those goals. I practiced some Spanish every week, started a journal and to take the time to compose better quality pictures. I’ve also become more serious with my Toastmaster membership. Especially since I actually pay for that membership. But then, a year later, reality has set in. Let me explain.

I work 9 hour days, and that does not include lunch. I take, on average 1 hour and 20 mins to get to work. With all the traffic in the Baltimore-DC area, getting home takes at least 2 hours. Figure in dinner, some family time, daily maintenance and planning for between 6 to 7 hours of sleep and you are left with not much. Weekends aren’t much help because that is when events, grocery shopping, meeting friends and family and home maintenance fell in.

So, The plan is still to accomplish those goals but some adjustments will need to be made. And I have come up with the following.

• Learning a new language. Spanish in particular, will need to be put on-hold. Or at least scaled down. I would love to learn Spanish, Learning a new language is one of the best ways to keep one’s mind sharp. But this takes practice, better with some alive that with a machine. I can read all the books there is, watch Spanish language movies and work on all the online practice sites but all will be forgotten if I cannot practice in a more consistent manner.
• Creative Writing. I still plan to start this before the end of the two-year period. As I had mentioned earlier, being a member of Toastmaster should help me in expressing myself better which should translate into improved writing creativity. That is my thought, and that is my plan. Journal writing and writing prompts will still continue and, we should have a short story in the works within 6 months.
• Photography. I will pursue this hand-in-hand with creative writing. The basics of photography are simple. It is learning the techniques and practicing that is time-consuming. Then there is managing all the photos you have taken and mastering post-processing. I decided to maintain two blogs for this purpose. One is this general purpose blog that will include my thoughts and experience on my journey to photography enlightenment. The other will highlight my best photos for people to comment on. I will continue to post to this site until the other is up.

Here is to a new reality.

© 2016, Norman Talon. All rights reserved.