I was reading an online post today from someone who suffers from anxiety, and how they used journalling as a means to help deal with it. One of the things they found useful was to list a number of good things that had happened during the day, and to also set some goals for the following day.
I suffer from anxiety sometimes. Mostly it’s focused on a particular issue and goes away when that thing has been resolved, but I do tend to worry about things in general too. This doesn’t tend to give me the same physical and mental symptoms as actual anxiety, but is more of a constant low-level awareness of things that might be (but not necessarily, will be) a problem. Sometimes this can lead to catastrophizing and imagining extreme outcomes from often innocuous things, such as someone’s tone of voice, or something I overhear. I’ve gotten better at recognizing these situations, and I can usually talk myself out of this behaviour, knowing that the thoughts are unrealistic and ungrounded.
Knowing this, I’m going to make an effort to look out for the good things each day, and make a note of them when they happen. I think that setting my weird mind looking out for good things will be a much better use of energy than imagining what might be bad. I’ll try to list some of them here each day.
Something good that happened today…
I took down the Christmas decorations. This is something I don’t enjoy very much and which always makes me feel a little bit sad that Christmas is over for another year, so it might seem weird that I’m using it as “something good”. But the fact is that, despite my sadness that I’ve had to take them down (not that I would leave them up indefinitely or anything), I don’t actually feel too bad about it. I think I was more worried about being sad, than actually sad, and I feel fine now.
I also had our two cats helping me which was kind of annoying, but also nice. A balance between the frustration that they were constantly getting in the way, and the delight at seeing them sitting in every single box they could find (usually just as I was about to put something inside it!), which made me smile and laugh.
Today’s pictures are the last of the batch I took when I visited King’s Lynn back at the start of autumn (I know I say this a lot, but time really is flying by quickly as I get older!). This cottage forms part of the border of the grounds of St. Nicholas’ Chapel, a church dating back to the 11th century.
Somehow, another year has concluded. I feel that I’m spinning closer and closer to whatever is at the centre of everything, each orbit feeling shorter than the last. At this rate, I expect a year to feel like five minutes before too long!
So as the year comes to a close I’ll pick my annual selection of favourite pictures, one from each month. very subjective as usual, and as always I could have picked one of several from some months. The pickings have become much slimmer over the past couple of months though, mostly due to other matters being on my mind and not shooting as much. December’s entry (given I’m keeping this selection film-based) is one I’ve only shot since Christmas, and only developed and scanned today. I expect this one may be usurped as I have a couple more rolls yet to scan (and one roll of colour from Barcelona to send off for processing) which may contain a preferred picture. We shall see.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I seem to have gone for a bit of a bridge theme for this selection. 🙂
I’ll end this bit by wishing you all a very happy New Year and wish good things for us all in 2025. Have a good one!
The view down the River Great Ouse to where it empties into The Wash. I wonder how many of those special, extra-tall electricity pylons there are around the country? I’ve only ever seen them where they span rivers, like in this case.
I’ve been studying for a technical qualification for the past few months (an IT networking qualification that I need to achieve to progress some other training) and today was my exam. I was pretty nervous about it – I don’t do any practical hands-on networking stuff, so everything is theoretical to me and probably harder to memorise as a result. The exam had a few scenario-type questions that I struggled with and I was pretty certain that I was going to fail, so it was with a big sense of relief when I found out that I’d passed. I’m even more happy that I don’t need to keep up my revision over the Christmas break. 🙂
The photos today are all of the Custom House in King’s Lynn, a charming building that I’ve already posted a medium-format shot of on the blog here. It’s one of those structures that begs to be photographed, and you can see below that I certainly obliged.
As a direct follow-on from yesterday’s post, here are the remaining shots from the roll of Kodak Gold that I finished off during a walk through Retford.
The first two pictures show Trinity hospital, which has served as an alms house since the 17th century, although the current building was constructed between 1832-1834. It’s a beautiful looking place and one that I’ve admired whenever I drive past (usually on trips to Mablethorpe) but this is the first time I’ve taken the opportunity to photograph it.
The next picture is some grand looking house peeking up above a wall across the road from the hospital.
Then some new houses under construction…
A big tree that looked nice in the sunshine.
Some older residential properties.
And finally, another attractive old building that now houses a barbershop and a beauty parlour.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
