homeostasis

Everything is bal­anc­ing itself out. I’ve stopped try­ing to pre­dict or con­trol my cycles of intro­ver­sion and extro­ver­sion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. As Oscar Wilde once said: “The only way to get rid of temp­ta­tion is to yield to it”. By doing what I want when I feel like it, every need is met in turn.

Life does­n’t get more com­fort­able than this. It’s been a great sum­mer.

baby eating on high chair

Now on mashed solids. Ruby at 11 months.

I’m glad I got here by myself, with­out the help of a friend, or lover, or wind­fall. It was some­thing I had to do on my own, so I’ll always know I’m strong enough to pick myself up and con­tin­ue grow­ing.

The only thing that’s real­ly miss­ing now is anoth­er cat (or two), but I already blew my kit­ty bud­get on Leonard’s vet bills. I’m not at the right place for a new adop­tion any­way, and I’ve decid­ed to wait until my major projects are fin­ished (hope­ful­ly some time around the end of the year) before I take on anoth­er life.

father and baby

It’s offi­cial; Kyden has the soft­est, pinchi­est cheeks ever at eight months.

I’ve been back from my trip for about a month and a half, but it feels more like a year. I’m so dif­fer­ent now from the per­son I was before I left. I was dying then, but I’m liv­ing now.

The only way I can tell how quick­ly time is tru­ly pass­ing is in the faces of my friends’ babies. Each time I see them they’re mak­ing new sounds, say­ing new words, more con­scious and coher­ent. I used to envy the care­free inno­cence they have when run­ning about naked, the sin­gle-mind­ed­ness they pos­sess when engrossed with a new toy, but now I feel like one of them.

9 comments

  1. WOW these kids are both so beau­ti­ful. Hey, do you have a blueish fil­ter on? or did you tweak the pho­tos after­ward? How’s this del­i­cate tint look hap­pen?

    • Yep, there’s a bit of colour-cross fil­ter added, although the fact that you noticed it makes me think it’s not-so-del­i­cate.

      • Oh don’t be hard on your­self.… I did­n’t grad­u­ate from art school for noth­ing : D

  2. How did you change from dying to liv­ing? Was it just a men­tal switch that you had to turn on? Is it an accep­tance kind of thing? Or was there a defin­i­tive moment or event that caused the uphill climb? I need to get on that road again too..

    • It was com­bi­na­tion of all those things, brought on by my trip, so it required both an inter­nal and exter­nal change. I’m think­ing you need to trav­el, but you also need to be at the right point in your life to appre­ci­ate it.

  3. Aww, Kyden is get­ting so big! Lovely pho­tos. I real­ly want to get that Canon 5D. I’ve been play­ing around with a T2i and real­iz­ing how out of date my Rebel XT is. I do like the fil­ter you’re using, gives it that time­less qual­i­ty with­out mak­ing it all insta­gram-like :p

    I actu­al­ly saw some­one tweet about these pho­tos and it made me think of you.

    http://www.weddingjojo.com/benandjuliana/photos

    Cracked me up XD

    • Thanks, I def­i­nite­ly try to tone down the grad­ing on my pho­tos cause I find the Instagram effect to be way over­done and out-of-date. I keep think­ing oth­er peo­ple would have seen more recent pho­tos of Kyden than me, but then I real­ize none of us are on Facebook.

      I’m not able to see that album though, seems like it’s pass­word pro­tect­ed now.

  4. Weird… I thought I left a msg here yes­ter­day, did that not go through?

    • I think your com­ment got flagged as spam (not even an option for approval!) cause you have the com­bi­na­tion of a few key­words about cam­eras, and a link. Makes me won­der what oth­er pho­tog­ra­phy peo­ple have had their com­ments blocked.

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