Good morning lovelies!

According to my blogger stats, 42 people viewed my post yesterday. So I am currently throwing myself a mini party. It is exciting to know that more than just my sister (shout-out to Cam, my most dedicated reader) has read this blog. Wahoo!

As I was driving to work this morning - it seems that my commute is my best time of inspiration - I had the idea to try and revitalize my mid-week. Usually Mondays or Fridays are when I try to make changes or start something new (i.e. "no refined sugar for this week" or "I will practice my French for 15 minutes a day") and the middle of the week gets lost in the excuse that I'm just trying to make it to the weekend.

But that isn't living each day, especially when that day happens to be in the middle of the week. So I decided to start something called "Wednesday Resolution" as a way to give some life back to my week. On Wednesdays, I will be making a resolution that helps me live in the present day or brings richness to the daily.

Soooo drumroll please . . .

Wednesday Resolution #1: I will stop wasting money on bad espresso

Because it really isn't worth it. And because it really is worth getting up early enough to stop by a good coffee shop on my way to work *cough* not Starbucks *cough*. Or figuring out how to brew some myself at work (pending venture for a later post).

I will be using the hashtag #WednesdayResolution to chronicle my journey on social media if you'd like to follow along or join in.

Don't be fooled by the ordinary cup. This was an amazing latte.

Here's to combating mid-week slump and living fully in each day! Happy Wednesday everyone!

Blogger's note: The above photo was taken on location in my office. It almost never looks that clean though, I moved everything just for the shot. Maybe one day I'll give a photo tour of my office. But since it is usually a mess, that will probably never happen.

. . . And this is only my third post.

Let me be straight . . . blogging is hard! Way harder than I expected.

Never did I anticipate I would be thinking so much about my day, about my surroundings, about my activities. I found myself wondering "how will this look on my blog?" or "how can I can phrase this in a witty way?"

Truth be told, my life really isn't all that blog-worthy. Things never look on my blog like they do in my head (a key reason my stint as a wedding photographer was so short-lived).

And I'm really not all that witty. I have my rare moments of genius and I savor those for days after but I mostly rely on a self-deprecating sense of humor to get me by.

But that wasn't why I started to blog in the first place. Not to make my life look more flashy or perfect than it actually is. At it's heart, this blog was meant to be a sort of online journal, a form of blogtherapy, a public accountability that forces me to intentionally find the good and beautiful in each day.

Honestly, it is really difficult for me to live in the present. One of the things that most surprised me after graduating college was how daily life is. I was ready to go one adventure after another and change the world all the while. Instead I found myself sitting in front of a computer for 30+ hours a week, doing very little of either.

Fast forward a couple years and not much has changed. Life is still very daily. But I've discovered, often just in small glimpses, that it is in the daily that life is really lived.

That's why reason the tagline for my blog is "practicing the art of daily living." Because I think it really is both an art and a discipline to live in each day that we've been given. Yes, I do have dreams for my future (more about those later) but I don't want my dreaming to take away the day that I am currently living.

When I pulled out of my driveway on my way to work this morning, I had the phrase "vulnerability begets vulnerability" running through my head. My hope is this: that this blog will be a place where I can become vulnerable with my life and all its dailiness. Not something that constrains my life, but something that enriches it. And something that is an encouragement to those who read it, that together we can make it through this journey called life, one day at a time.

Oh Mondays.

It's the same every week. I drink bad coffee, tackle an inbox full unread emails and lament the fact that I didn't do enough laundry over the weekend.

But sometimes I also go on evening hikes with wonderful friends. And am reminded that I do live in a place of beauty.

Or I celebrate the birth of my future nephew-in-law, AKA the future king of England. 

It will all work out, my sister and brother-in-law just need to have a daughter within the next five or so years and I'll be well on my way to being a royal auntie. 

Not bad for a Monday ;)

I had one of those nights ... when my perfect little plan gets set a bit askew.

I'm talking long-term, life plans. The kind that I hold onto the tightest and ironically also the kind that are the most out of my control. I can be irrational like that. 

I'd recently mapped out a financial plan for paying off my student loans (which was looong overdue! Seriously kids, start planning as soon as you graduate!) and then realized tonight that I'd way miscalculated the interest on one of my loans. Meaning I owe more than I'd thought and now my plans have to change.

Really not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things (but try telling that to myself when I'm in the middle of an irrational fit - cue two-year-old moment).

Yes, I have student loans. But I also have a college degree and a good job that enables me to pay them off (it's been officially decided that I experience the most "first world problems" in my family and here is a perfect example of that). 

In all honesty, though, this makes me recognize how much security I put in being "free" with my loans as the chains that are tying my down.

When I was younger, my mom used to quote Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, "The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance."

So even if I can't make my student loans disappear overnight, I can choose to not be consumed with paying them back ASAP. There is so much more to life than that. 

I may get caught up in my plans and dreams for my future, but I am trying to learn to see the good and beautiful in the dailiness of life. Because that is where life is really lived. 

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