2024 New Year's Notes

To celebrate the 2024 new year, McCrae and I went on a micro-adventure to watch the sun rise over the ocean.

This morning McCrae and I woke up at 4am, packed up the dogs (and a coffee for me) and drove to Wrightsville Beach. We arrived just in time to watch the sun rise over the ocean. The sky was rosy on the horizon, the cold smell of salt and sand lifted on the January breeze.

I loved this approach to the new year — a micro-adventure. It was McCrae’s idea: instead of staying up late to say goodbye to something old, we got up early to say hello to something new.

And this morning was amazing. Simple, but amazing. McCrae and I wore our matching red beanies that I knit this fall to keep warm in the chill air. Pilot experienced the beach for the first time, Ryder loped along the beach despite his old age, and I pulled out my camera and took pictures.

I’ve struggled sometimes with photography; there’s a pressure to create, and so often there’s pressure to create a certain thing — a portrait, images for an event, a persona. But when I do photography in a way that fulfills me, it’s not so much about creating those things. Instead, it’s about noticing details and capturing them for reflection later. The color of the sunrise. The warmth of McCrae’s red beanie against the blue twilight sky. The glint of a gull’s feather in the sunlight. The crunch of broken shells under my feet. The frothy sea foam surging across the sand as I danced away in my leather boots, Pilot nipping at the waves. The flash of a dolphin’s tail in the surf, or a diver bird breaking the surface of the water.

Ultimately, it’s a practice in mindfulness. And it’s something I want to cultivate throughout the year: just being present, noticing things, not feeling rushed or pressured or imposed upon. To expand — physically and emotionally and intellectually — into my own space. To flex my own boundaries, and grow within and beyond that space.

To protect that space and love the process.