This year’s 52 week photo project happens on Sunday mornings. I clear a space on the dining room table. Then I roll out the mindfulness dice that Michael gave me for Christmas and set them up in some sort of structure. I take a number of pictures and then I sort through them for the one I think looks the best. I do some minimal edits and then post. This is my method. Last year, it was the same method, just on a different day. This year, I’m posting the 52 photo project to more than one place. I finally decided to renew my flickr account, so I have unlimited photo storage. This also helps me keep track of things. I am terrible at organizing my photos, but if I am really good about creating albums when I am doing specific photo projects.

I didn’t have this available to me last year. I thought I could just get by with using Instagram and let my Flickr membership go. Technically, I could have still used. It was just that I was full on storage with the free version. I would have had to delete photos to make room for new photos. I am really good about throwing away tangible things, but not digital things. So, the 52 week project went to Instagram. Each week, I would scroll through my Instagram photos before posting the newest project photo so I could make sure I was on the correct number. It was kind of messy. So, I fixed that for this year’s project and I am really glad that I did. It is really nice and somewhat rewarding to go to one folder and see all of the pictures for that project.

Since this year’s project involves dice, I would expect a certain amount of randomness from picture to picture. I know it has only been five weeks, but the words ‘let go’ have appeared in three out of the five pictures. ‘Trust intuition’ has appeared twice, as well as ‘find joy’, but ‘let go’ has been the most persistent. Because of this persistent mindfulness block, I’ve been stuck on the idea and concept of ‘let go’. It doesn’t say ‘let it go’, inducing me to break out into song (you know the one). It very clearly says ‘let go’. My interpretation of this is multilayered and wrapped up into the emotional constraints that I put on myself. I have just started reading Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking by Leonard Mlodinow. I picked it up for research purposes regarding something that I am writing and hopefully shaping into a book. I am not far into this book yet, but I am far enough in to know that this just might be some relevant reading material.

Leonard Mlodinow begins the book with a story about his parents, both of whom survived the Holocaust. His mother tended to approach every situation with an over dramatic reaction. Something as simple as a breaking shoelace became “Oh, the horrors! The Nazis are coming. All is lost.” His dad was the opposite. Everything was met with a calm even reaction. Mlodinow became curious about how two people experiencing the same horrific traumas could have such different displays of emotion and how the way they display those emotions affect how their children understand ‘normal’ emotions. Oof…those are some very interesting questions Mlodinow is asking and why the ‘let go’ mindfulness keeps showing up for me. Sometimes, what you have been taught and shown to be ‘normal’, is not really all that normal.

I am grateful for the mantra this week of ‘let go’. I have said these words to myself as I layed in savasana and allowed myself to have no judgment as the tears have fallen from my eyes. I have not had a tear-free savasana since before January. I have said those words this week when despite my tired body, I thought I should be doing more things, be more active. I skipped one day of exercise, but made it to my yoga mat every day. I felt those words this week when bitterness and resentment have risen up inside me, threatening to spill out of my mouth (or at least my fingers). I can’t explain this one; bitterness and resentment has just been present this week. I will allow myself tears of sadness and joy. I will allow bouts of frustration. I allow myself human emotions. I am letting go of containing myself inside the restrictive emotional box of my own making.

It is a mantra that must be practiced and repeated often.