Hello! Here is my obligatory acknowledgement that I haven't blogged in a very long time!
With that out of the way, let's get on with it. Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026, or as Pat calls it, Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-six. No one knows why!
It's the beginning of a new year and you know what that means! My brain is filled to the brim with ideas for CHALLENGES!! I've long ago given up on trying to keep myself from getting excited about the feeling of possibility that pops up at the beginning of every year (and every month too, but to a lesser extent). It doesn't matter that half of my plans and goals and expectations come to naught. I still love coming up with new things to challenge myself with and even if they do sometimes get abandoned (and sometimes they don't!) they always push me a little, help me learn, and usually give me at least some productive (and oftentimes creative) output.
I am turning 52 this year and guess what? There are 52 weeks in a year! Oh what perfection for creating challenges!
I'm resisting the urge to tell you about every single challenge I've come up with for my life this year because a) some of them aren't relevant to this blog and b) I'm trying to keep my blog entries loose and somewhat shorter because, you guessed it! One of my challenges is 52 blog entries.
So, I'll start with this. I want to take 52 photos of Ordinary Beauty. Here's the story behind that: When I was in my early twenties I hated the city I lived in. (I still live in it. It is Las Vegas, Nevada.) I thought it was ugly and brown and uninspiring and blah. I've softened on that, especially toward the desert, but also (somewhat) toward the city herself. But back then, despite this feeling of being stuck in a place I detested, I also had a streak of idealism and romanticism. One day, while looking at a colorful mural painted on the side of a school, I made the observation that even though I thought that Las Vegas was ugly, I was willing to acknowledge that there were bits and pieces and pockets of beauty here and there and I decided I was going to seek them out and photograph them. I told my friend and he replied, "There isn't any beauty here." And that was the end of that because what he said killed all my enthusiasm for the project.
Now I don't want to overinflate the significance of what he said on my attitude and feeling toward my city or my ability over the years to recognize beauty in ordinary things. I have learned to appreciate where I live to the extent that I am able and my eye has always sought out beautiful details and made note of them. But it was significant enough to dampen that small piece of optimism I was carrying in the midst of all the negativity and despair I was mentally surrounding my geographical location with. But, if it hadn't made some sort of impact, I wouldn't have remembered it for all these years. I want to reach back over the years and give a little bit of healing to the girl-becoming-woman I was then. I want to tell her, "It was worth doing. The idea you had was a good one--a wholesome, light, sweet project that was definitely worth doing."
At first I was worried that I was going to forget about this challenge and thus fall off on keeping up with it, but at some point yesterday I realized I already had a contender for my photo of the week in my phone. I took it during my morning walk. Noticing beauty comes naturally to me. I just need to turn that dial up a little bit and follow through more when the urge to pull out my phone and take a picture of [whatever] arises. At the moment I had that realization, I did just that and pulled out my phone to take another photo of what I was noticing right then. Thus I give you my first official photo for this challenge, as well as a bonus photo because why not?
