{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust – my word for 2011}.

if you had seen atlas on that bridge – belly low to the ground, unhappy face, movement slow, staring through the slats at the water below every few steps, you would know why this photo reminds me of trust. (or perhaps it should be the lack thereof.)

it seems most everywhere is warmer than here

(unless you live in the southern hemisphere, i imagine)

so i am sending you a breath of cool air

(or warm air, as the case may be)

if atlas could give me one piece of (photographic) advice, this would be it.

if you're going to take a picture, just take it and be quick about it. if it works out, then it works out. don't try to make me do something for a picture. i'm a dog. i don't pose.

not that i am always very good at listening, of course.

here, we were at bonneville dam. i was hiding inside one of those little stone towers with gun holes. atlas jumped up to find me and he looked so cute peeking at me that i decided i needed a picture. look how well that worked out.

(you know what i really want to do someday? i want to do a not-a-william-wegman photo shoot – one where i have to dress up in ridiculous costumes and atlas just gets to be himself. it feels like appropriate restitution.)

"it's beginning to look a lot like christmas." ha. i bet you didn't see that one coming.

i am now the happy owner of a food processor. do you know that they even slice potatoes?! i can't believe i used to wonder what on earth i would do with a food processor. thanks to my lovely food processor, i have thinly sliced carrots for salads and fresh pico de gallo in the frig. oh, happy happy day.

so it doesn't disappear without warning, i must tell you that i am saying goodbye to my animal reiki sessions at the end of the month (or thereabouts). i love the furry ones, but my heart tells me that it is time to focus my energy on other things. i need to find a way to use the icon, though – i do so love looking at sleepy atlas in my sidebar.

i saw the last harry potter movie on friday. no more harry potter. can you believe it? it feels like i've been anticipating a harry potter book or movie for at least eight years. i think i am going to start anticipating a visit to the harry potter theme park. if i wait long enough, someone is bound to invent a broomstick that flies. (really, why aren't there broomsticks that fly already? it seems very possible.)

what is going on in your world?

when i am completely grounded in myself and in my truth, i am never alone.

i believe in something bigger than all of us. the name i use depends on the day.

i believe in angels. i say thank you to them every night and sometimes i ask them for a sign to let me know they're near.

i believe in faeries. i build them summer cottages in the woods and ask them to keep the wasps away from atlas.

i believe that trees have spirits. (well, i believe that everything has a spirit.) once, when i said hello to a tree, i heard it say hello back in a deep, kind voice. it was so amazing that it brought me to tears.

i tell the trees and the flowers and the weeds how beautiful they are.

i say hello to the squirrels and the bees and the blue jays that stop by my window.

i talk to spiders and ladybugs and butterflies and dragonflies.

once, i even called a slug "sweetie", as in, "sweetie, you are the most gigantic slug in all the world!" (it came out unconsciously, which made me think that i use the term a bit too often.)

i am finding my way to my own truth.

the point is not to try to convince you that angels or faeries exist or that trees talk. i feel very strongly that we all have our own truth and i have no wish to try to convince anyone out of their truth and into mine.

the point is not even that angels or faeries exist or that trees talk. it's entirely possible that they don't.

the point is that i want to choose what to believe in.

i choose to believe in these things because the me who believes in them is different than the me who doesn't believe in them.

the me who believes in faeries and angels and talking trees is open to magic and mystery and possibility and wonder. she lives in a world where anything is possible and where things can happen in the blink of an eye. she remembers the inherent value in everyone and everything. she sees the goodness in everyone around her. she makes choices that are based on hope and faith. she makes choices that are based on the kind of world she wants to live in – a world full of peace and joy and kindness and love.

living in that world is important to me. the things i choose to believe remind me of that world. they help me to access the wiser part of me, the part of me who can rise above my fears and make those choices.

this isn't to say that i am always the me who believes in angels and faeries and talking trees; however, even in my most doubtful moments, i believe in the possibility of all of them.

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust – my word for 2011}

i had an epiphany about surrender today that seemed perfectly suited for my trust project. since i was hiking at the time, i recorded it as a voice memo on my iphone so i would remember to write it down.

instead, i'm trying something new. listening to the recording made me laugh, so i thought i'd let you laugh along with me. fingers crossed this works!

Surrender

p.s. did you see the ladybug in the photo?

at the moment, i am somewhat obsessed with energy anatomy by caroline myss. (i think i already mentioned this.) i have listened to it at least three times and am pretty sure i'm not done yet.

you know how sometimes a book (or a quote or a song or a person or ..) will enter your life in what feels like supremely perfect timing? this feels like that.

here is some of what really struck me.

the idea that choosing to invest your energy into group perceptions is a way of trying to control the rate at which change happens in your life.

this hit me like a ton of bricks. of course this is what frightens me. i've always liked the idea of surrendering completely (you know, the whole "here i am, do with me as you will" thing) but it totally freaks me out. i like my life. i like thinking that i have control over it. what if it changes in a way that i can't even imagine right now. it doesn't matter if the change is good or bad, it still scares me.

the idea that choosing to invest your energy into group perceptions is essentially giving that group a vote in your life.

again, of course! this is exactly what i'm doing! i'm doing this every single time i think, "but what would they think?" i'm doing it for every single they. sometimes the they is clearly defined, sometimes it's a very fuzzy concept. when i look at it from this perspective, it really hits home. i don't want any of those theys to have a vote and here i am giving them one – and it's often the deciding vote.

the idea that it's not the choices that are important, it's the motivation behind the choice.

this has got me thinking about all my choices and whether they're based on fear or faith. surprisingly, it works even for seemingly small ones.

sitting at the computer – accompanied by mindless internet wandering – is often based on fear. i'm scared that i can't trust what i really want to do in that moment. i'm scared of even listening to what i really want to do in that moment. i want someone else to tell me the right thing to do that will make everything work out perfectly until the end of time. i'm afraid that if i'm not at the computer, i'm not working, and then i am somehow being a drain on society. the list goes on and on.

i could go on and on, but i will spare you. it has clearly got me thinking though. (you know, because i don't do nearly enough thinking as it is. hee.)

i was reading through my inca trail posts on my very first blog and some of the stories were making me laugh and laugh. this one was begging to be told again.

i had a very hard time falling asleep the night before the hike began due to anticipation and nervousness. i woke up after only a few hours of sleep, in the throes of a horrible nightmare about vampires. the nightmare wouldn’t stop, so i lay awake in the dark, trying to make the vampires go away.

all of a sudden, i heard murmuring coming from the bed next to me and then my roommate joan let out two loud long screams.

i didn’t know what to do. what if someone came running, thinking i was killing her. i finally said her name softly and she went back to sleep.

i, on the other hand, was now wide-awake.

when i told her about this in the morning, she said that she was having a nightmare about witches. when she screamed, the witch was attempting to drive a rusty iron nail into her neck.

(did i mention how perfectly suited we were as roommates? there was much giggling.)

i walk down a particular sidewalk at least once a day and couldn't help but notice that the grass alongside it was always littered with dog droppings. it looked like a very popular doggy toilet. i was tired of feeling cross about it so, back in december when i was thinking of goals for the year, i decided to adopt the sidewalk for the year. i started bringing an extra bag with me on each walk and would pick up as much as the bag would hold.

for the first few months, i must confess that i did not do the work with a happy heart. in fact, truth necessitates that i admit i spent most of the time thinking unpleasant thoughts about the people who left the messes, with the hope that they would see me picking up after them and feel guilty.

every day, i picked up a bag's worth (or more) but by the next day, it would either look like i hadn't done a thing or it would have gotten worse. it was driving me mad with frustration and annoyance that i was putting in this time and things were getting worse, not better.

around earth day, it occurred to me that with all the negative energy i was emitting, i was probably better off not picking anything up at all. it felt like the energy i was giving off was worse than what i was cleaning up, and it definitely didn't feel like i was doing something nice for the planet.

then, it occurred to me that i could actually be grateful for the opportunity. i feel so lucky to live in such a beautiful world and there are so few ways that i can show my love and appreciation. here was something useful and tangible that i could do to express my thanks.

somehow, that realization changed things. i stopped disliking the people who didn't clean up after their dogs and cleaning up after them became like cleaning up after atlas – something i do because it's part of taking care of this thing that i love so much and so i can appreciate it as such.

and then the interesting thing happened. the grass slowly became clean. i'd go to pick up a bag's worth and the place i cleaned the day before would still be clean. i'd go back the next day and both sections would be clean. slowly, i made it through the entire length of the sidewalk. i'd miss a few days and it would stay pretty clean. now, i can miss weeks and it still stays pretty clean.

i am just so fascinated by how the grass only became cleaner after my thoughts became cleaner. it is so very interesting to me.

i am now the happy owner of an iphone (which i adore and have named cleo, after cleopatra) so i've been thinking a lot about usability.

a year or two after i started working, i read a book called the inmates are running the asylum. the author explained that high-tech products are driving us crazy because they are designed by engineers who design products for users who are just like them; they don't realize how hard the products are to use for the average user. the book was fascinating. the behaviors familiar. and in it, i found my passion.

that passion drove me for many years. my eventual goal was to get into a group that focused on the user, even though i didn't have one of the typical degrees. i read and learned about usability and user-centered design. i learned how to run usability tests. i worked even longer hours so i could volunteer to do fun side projects related to usability for the products i worked on. i conducted informational interviews with people who had related jobs so i could learn what else to learn. i even wrote an essay – purely for fun – about how i had found the perfect thing for me and how it connected all my interests and how lucky i felt to have found my passion so early.

and then that passion faded. right about the time i discovered reiki.

when i quit my job to be a reiki person, a part of me was so very confused (as, no doubt, were many people i worked with). how could i work so hard for so long for something that i thought was my dream only to abandon it for something else. something that, truth be told, didn't seem to have the same level of passion behind it. (well, this may or may not be true. i think passion has many forms.) what if that really was my dream and now i was even further away from it.

after months of angst and confusion, i found my way to the truth.

the reason i care so much about how things work is because our experience with devices or applications or web pages is often full of frustration, pain, hopelessness, powerlessness. we feel like we must not be smart enough. we feel like we can't be trusted to make the right decisions. i've been there. we've all been there. i wanted to help make those experiences better.

the essence of user-centered design and usability is the interaction – the relationship – between the user and the thing they're using, whether it's a device or an application or a web page. when that relationship works, it is full of qualities like trust and sovereignty and permission and ease and safety and support and beauty and hope.

i still care about all of that. only in learning to listen to myself, i realized how very much i care about the interactions – the relationship – we have with our own self, our own body, our own life.

it turns out that i didn't lose my passion. it was there all along, waiting for me to realize it. oh, i suppose it's possible that someday i might decide that i want to help make applications that work. for now, i find it comforting to know that the thing i cared so much about is still the thing i care so much about. it just changed form a little.