Kat Eye Studio

by

And the winner is…

Today’s photo is another one from the foggy morning we had on Thursday. I love the look of the end of autumn in Parco di Monza here, the colors still bright but the leaves are sparse on the trees and thick on the ground. Not only have the trees mostly lost their leaves, but the fog has arrived and the air has a decided chill to it… winter has arrived here in northern Italy.

But I have a bit of summer to give away today!  The winner of the flower postcards is… EVA of the blog to be determined!

Thanks so much for all of your comments and feedback. I learned there are more ways to read a blog than I had really thought about, and I also learned that some changes are just not noticeable. In a lot of ways, that’s a good thing! I want this place to keep the same look and feel every time people visit, while also being able to update and upgrade as new features come along.

So I’ll give you a little blog tour of what’s new in the last couple of weeks…

1. Find Your Eye E-course tab – I added the tab with a teaser a couple of weeks ago and filled in the course description this week. I am so excited about this course, I’ve been working on developing it for months and am in the final throes of completion (hence, the need for KaNoJoMo). It will start January 9 and will run 6 weeks. I’ll tell you more about it in the coming weeks! Registration will open soon at wishstudio and I’ll let you know when that happens too.

2. I put my last name on my profile. This may seem like a silly minor change, but to me it’s about owning my work and bringing my whole self to this space in the virtual world. My full name was appearing in other places I was writing online, so why not here, in my own space?

3. You can follow these links to easily subscribe or find me in all of these places. Before, I had a badge for Facebook, a badge for Flickr and the Followers block on the sidebar. When I wanted to add Twitter, I needed to free up space and make them all easily visible. Since you already follow me in one way or another, you probably don’t even notice this space.  Pretty soon I’ll have blog buttons available for my Find Your Eye e-course and for Exploring with a Camera to share that will use some of this space too… Watch for them!

4. I added a “Search” box for the blog. I only post the Top Labels on the sidebar, and go through and periodically add and remove based on the labels I’ve been using, so this search bar lets you easily find things on the blog that aren’t available as Top Labels. If you want to see photos from say, Paris (which is not one of the top labels), you can type that in and find all of the posts that reference Paris. I don’t know if anyone else will use it, but I’ve been writing this blog long enough, I’ve discovered that I can’t even find things all of the time. 🙂

5. The “Join In” section is not new, but I wanted to highlight that I change things here periodically, depending on what’s going on and what I personally participate in. Coming up VERY soon is the Mortal Muses “We are Thankful” blog hop. More information is available here or if you click on the image in the sidebar. I hope to see you in the hop!

For those of you who wondered, I changed the blog header in mid-September (the subway image is from my last trip to Paris) and added the tabs sometime this summer (I actually can’t remember when anymore). The color of the tab section changed when I changed the header image in September, probably making it more visible now that it’s orange.  Thanks so much for participating and leaving your comments! I learned a lot. And if you are sad you didn’t win, there are more postcards that will be given away… since I finally got my order. 🙂

I will not be posting on the blog for the next week, I have a seriously intense week of work this week and will not even be online starting tomorrow. Another reason for KaNoJoMo! (I managed to not join anything this week, even though there were a couple of temptations along the way.) That also means that the next Exploring with a Camera will be delayed for a week or two until I can get things caught back up.

So with that, I wish you a great week, and you’ll hear from me later!

by

Can I Resist?

I’m having a heck of time this month. You see, I’m a joiner. And there are all of these things to join in November, just calling to me! But I’m trying to resist, because I have a busy month that includes a lot of personal projects I want to do, instead of joining something that doesn’t get me closer to my goals and dreams.

It started with Art Every Day Month, which looks so fun. I mean, I create most every day anyway in some way, this is right up my alley. But I’m resisting, because I don’t want to focus my creative inspiration and efforts just to meet a self-imposed deadline every day when I have so much else going on.

Then there is NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, which inspires you to write a post every day on your blog for the month of November. Hey, I do that most of the time anyway! But not committing this month, which includes visitors and travel and the busiest, longest work week of my entire year.

Along the way I ran into 30 Days of Gratitude. What a wonderful way to uplift and celebrate the month of November, than to be grateful, for 30 days? But then that focuses me on one specific topic… and again a whole 30 days of commitment to it. Can’t do it.

On my internet wanderings I bumped into Digital Detox, which sounds like a wonderful week long little way to simplify your life if you want to participate, and then November in Black and White. Hey, I love black and white photography. But wait, that would commit me to a whole month of it. Right now, when I have other things I’m focusing on. OK, so no.

Thank goodness I don’t have any idead for a novel, or NaNoWriMo would be calling to me too.

I hadn’t realized that I was such a joiner until I find myself struggling to resist joining in to all of these things. The communities they create are so fun. The things you gain by doing these activities is so worthy. As I read some of my favorite blogs I feel like I’m looking longingly into the windows of people at a party and I’m outside in the cold. But I remind myself, no, I can’t put myself through this right now. Because for me, what’s worse than being outside looking in? Joining something and then not being able to follow through. I beat myself up, because I committed to something, darn it, I should follow through. Instead, I’m choosing to stay sane this month, without adding extra pressure.

So to satisfy those urges to join, I’ve decided to create KaNoJoMo – doesn’t that sound fabulous? It stands for Kat’s Non-Joining Month. This month, I am not going to join or commit to anything that is not on my personal priority list. I am going to resist, walk away, focus on my own stuff in the limited time I have available. I’ll just wave at everyone else through the window as I walk by, give them a thumbs up to let them know I support what they are doing.

Want to join me? Haha – I tricked you! You can’t join me! That’s the idea, no joining. It’s a personal decision, one you can make too. No monthly or weekly or daily challenges or commitments to other projects if that is not right for you. Only commitments you make to yourself. You don’t need to announce it to the world (as, ironically, I am doing), you just have to make a personal choice.  You don’t need permission from anyone else but you, and you don’t have to apologize to anyone for not joining.

Week 1 of KaNoJoMo is already over, and I survived without joining anything. Whew. Only 3 more weeks to go…

Today’s photo is from Saturday evening in Venice. *Sigh* I love Venice. Still.

Upcoming Events