trees

I try and do a weekly finding the gold, you can read one of my regular posts here if you want to see what its all about. This week finding the gold has been a bit harder than usual. One particular day began with being woken early after what can be loosely described as sleep by my 2 year old singing in my ear ‘para…..para…para….dise. My OH, half sleep starved and semi-conscious, mumbles ‘that’s irony right there, that is’ Ah..the humour keeps you sane sometimes….

I wrote the above bit back in december on a particularly bad day when finding the gold was pretty impossible. So i had sat down in the evening and felt determined to try and find something good in that day. I think sleep must have got the better of me…or a sick child waking…or something else but it never got finished.

I remember this day because it was the entrance call of what has turned out to be a particularly mean flu virus which is still kicking around now. My youngest had, had a bad night and was very grumpy and upset at breakfast. There was spilt breakfast, missing school shoes, last minute, door-stop requests for things that really really have to be taken into school THAT day, refusals to wear coats, gloves or scarfs despite the frost on the ground and then the inevitable swooshing through the dog muck littering the streets on the walk to school..thats just before 9am!

I dropped my nursery girlie off and then decided to hit a local park with my grumpy and sleep starved baby to give the dog a little run. Ah lets just say it didn’t really go that well. She cried a lot, the dog ran off and then took off after a dog of the girlie variety…..

So I decided to call it a day but not before i had captured the peaceful stillness of the winter in the park. That felt like my shard of gold. Reminded of the incredible beauty in nature..even if it took till i loaded these images into lightroom later on that day..in fact in the evening once all the little ones where in bed and i had a little space to breathe…

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Finding the gold: When old prospectors would look for gold they would take large pan and grab up huge loads of gravel and sand, shaking it backwards and forwards to encourage the heavier gold to the bottom of the pan, at the same time the lighter materials which are worthless are worked up to the surface and swept away. This process is repeated until all that is left is the heaviest most valuable material.

My finding the gold project is inspired by this description, searching through the daily stuff of life that is ultimately worthless…the stress, the what ifs, the tantrums, the work nonsense,…and finding those valuable bits of my day, my week that are the moments i need to remember. The things that catch my eye and are just beautiful in their simplicity unbidden and untouched by the daily grind. Things that make me smile, even if sometimes that smile doesn’t linger and stay.

Some weeks it is harder to than others, sometimes the pan feels like it is only full of gravel and sand. There are weeks when its hard to keep going, searching through the detritus of this crazy, busy, frantic stage of life. Times when having time to catch you breathe seems impossible let alone stopping to look… but then you catch a glimpse, even in the darkest of darkness a small shard of gold can shine out and lift your spirits. Even if it is just one piece.

Can you find the gold in your day…?