Five years ago. Where were you?

Danny and I were:(In California in May of 2008 for a friend’s wedding, and we spent a day exploring Yosemite.)

Five years ago I was wrapping up my final semester of college. Can it really be that five years have passed since I was a student? I was deeply immersed in my manuscript class, that big, all-important final push for creative writing seniors. My manuscript was a collection of poetry that I’d hoped to see published. Because I just knew that I had to create a career for myself where my every day would be spent doing something creative. I knew that I had to do something artistic, to leave my fingerprints on something I made. Writing was, really, my only artistic strength, so writing it had to be. I couldn’t draw, like my brother. I couldn’t play an instrument, like my mother. I had inherited my father’s love of writing, and I was determined to someday make my living at it.

Let me just point out that I never believed I would make a living writing poetry, in particular. I just loved it.

Five years later, I haven’t given up on that dream of publishing the novels I’ve been tinkering with for years. I’ve just found that my perspective has shifted, and I’ve found another line of creative work that I’m more than thrilled to call my career now. I am making a living doing something creative (although also filing taxes, renewing insurance policies, signing up with credit card processing companies, and learning new software programs isn’t quite what I’d had in mind. . . ). I am leaving my fingerprints on a creative body of work that is truly meaningful to the people I’m creating it for, and will be meaningful to people who haven’t even seen it yet — the children and grandchildren who will experience their family’s story through the photographs Danny and I create.

So, five years later, I am:(Clearly excited about my job as I posed for a quick lighting test at our most recent wedding in Winter Park earlier this month.)

In some ways, I can’t believe five whole years have passed. In others, I can’t believe it’s been only five years. Five wonderful years, during which that long-held dream became a reality. Not quite in the way I had expected — but in a way that is incredibly satisfying, incredibly exciting, and incredibly fulfilling. I can hardly wait to see where we are another five years from now.

Five years from now. Where will you be?

~ Laura