Kat Eye Studio

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Morning Hikes

Hiking season has begun! Sunrise is finally early enough I can be out in the woods most mornings for a three to five mile hike before I head off to work. Yay! I’ve missed my hikes.

Bald Hill Park Corvallis Oregon Kat Sloma Photography

Last fall, I stopped hiking regularly when Daylight Savings time ended and I went back to work full time, which happened nearly simultaneously. Without the morning hours free, I just didn’t have enough light to hike anymore. I thought that would change when I was able to go back to work part time again, but now I’ve got a new position at work, a promotion I’m very excited about, and I’ve made the choice to stay full time.

So… That means resetting my own expectations along with my schedule. It leaves less morning time for everything I like to do in the AM hours: journaling, creating art, blogging, hiking. I’m learning to adapt. Rather than feel constrained I’m going to make my choices work together.

From a photography standpoint, I’ve decided to do a Morning Hike series (#morninghike on social media) of photographs. I would like to create one finished photograph from each hike I do in the forest. I often photograph on my hikes but I don’t always share because they may not be exactly what was inspiring me creatively at the time. That’s a luxury I won’t have going forward… I want to hike, I want to create photographs, I don’t have all the time in the world… I need to bring these two things together.

Today’s photograph is from yesterday’s hike. Nice, huh? It was a gorgeous morning, and the photograph captures the feeling of it perfectly. It shares the optimism of spring; the promise of a new day.

I think this commitment is going to challenge my photography, and I will learn to express myself in new ways. But most of all, I will be combing two things I love more strongly, hiking and photography, rather than feeling like I am trading off one for the other. I love the feeling of “wholeness” that brings.

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When a Plan Comes Together

Cheerful flowers and colorful paint make me smile!
Carbondale, Colorado

Guess what today is? Monday, yes. The middle of August, that too. It’s also the day I link in to Creative Every Day and the Creative Exchange. But it’s even bigger than that: Today is the first day of my part time work schedule. Woohoo!!

Last week everything was finalized and agreed, and as of today I will be working at my “day job” Monday through Friday ~11am to 5pm-ish. I am so excited. I have been working toward this change for a very long time.

For those of you who may be new around here, I fell in love with having my mornings as my personal time while in Italy. My work schedule was afternoons and evenings, due to the need to work with both the Italian and US folks on a daily basis, which left my personal time as the mornings. Some time ago, as part of a series called Lessons from Abroad, I wrote about how changing my schedule this way led to some great realizations for my creativity. Mornings are my creative time.

When I finalized my schedule and transition date with my new manager last week, I realized how long in coming this transition really was. It was almost a year ago, last October, when I first started talking to my former manager about going part time on my return to the US. It was before that, while writing the Lessons from Abroad series for Jenny Shih‘s newsletter and blog, that I identified the schedule change and aligning to my creative energy cycle as a key factor in my personal transformation. And it was part of writing the specific article, Change up Your Schedule, that I really started to think about how I could maintain my “mornings free” schedule upon my return.

So, over the last year I’ve been having periodic conversations with my husband, my management at work, and myself about how this could work. I’ve played with different schedule ideas, “trying them on” in my imagination to see what would fit for me personally and at work. The Monday-Friday/11-5 schedule is the one I settled on recently, and when I proposed it last week it was a win-win for everyone. My new manager likes that I will be there every day instead of taking a day off; I like that I have 5 more mornings a week for myself. Can’t beat that.

This is a great example of how long it can sometimes take an idea to come to fruition. The idea of part time/ mornings free was a seed planted a year ago. Nurtured, the seed grew into a plan that I took small steps on over time. It is a good reminder that if you stick with an idea, turn it into a plan and take baby steps toward it along the way, you can make it work. Things may not happen immediately, but with action, things do happen. Without action, it’s just daydreaming. Yes, I was nervous when I first started talking about part time at work. Yes, I was nervous to have the conversation on my schedule last week. But all of my groundwork and planning and patience paid off, and here I am this Monday morning, free.

What will I create today?

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New Schedules + Favorites: Covered Parking

Covered Parking
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2009
I only have three more days of “favorite” pictures left on the schedule and then I’ve got to get myself back onto the regular blogging bandwagon. You can probably tell I’ve scheduled these posts on Italy time and then I’m writing them as I can. For some reason, I’m reluctant to change my blog back to Pacific Standard Time. I know, I’ll get over it. It will be too confusing not to change it.
So what will my blogging schedule be? The same as Italy, where I write in the morning? Do I change it up to write at night? Do I write whenever and schedule? How is it all going to work out? To top it all off I’m going part time at work (yay!!) but not immediately, so that means it will be a while before things settle out.
I was chatting with a friend at work today about my work schedule and said, “It’s fun to figure it all out!” I honestly didn’t know where that comment came from. I mean, it doesn’t feel very fun right now. I’m a bit overwhelmed and tired. And then I stopped and realized, my statement was totally true. When I stop focusing on my tired/overwhelm of the moment, I am excited to figure it all out. Even though I don’t have a routine right now (and I looooove routine), I have the possibility of figuring out something new. I have the possibility to combine some of the best parts of my Italy schedule with my Corvallis schedule and see what happens. 
Add ingredients, shake well, taste. Stay tuned to see how it comes out!

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