Pictures + Words are a first person chronicle of stories, lessons of life, creativity, sometimes humour, and always a picture.
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This photo emerged from obscurity on the weekend. It wasn’t exactly lost, but it hadn’t seen the light of day for many years. The original is on a 36 x 24 millimetre piece of slide film that had been packed away for almost fifteen years. Saturday was the day I finally decided to tackle a […]
I am patiently waiting for snow to return to Toronto. That sentence ⬆️ might be the most surprising sequence of words I’ve ever strung together. This patient waiting thing is a seismic shift. Most years I dream about the number of ways I can escape the snow and cold. With nowhere to go but home, […]
Joseph Campbell, the originator of the meme“follow your bliss,” was clear: bliss isn’t always easy. Bliss skins your knees and tests your mettle. It’s our bliss because we care enough to keep going when it becomes challenging. Which comes first? The passion and bliss, or the practiced skill sharpened on challenge and obstacle? It reminds […]
On Friday I shared a link to an episode of The Daily podcast called The Sunday Read. The Daily is published by The New York Times. If they think Sunday, with its different pace for many, is a good day for stories, I’ll forego years of my own research and start the Sunday Stories category […]
Worst Marathon Ever got me thinking about marathons. Marathons are macro. Curious about the micro, I looked up the average number of steps in the whole. The average number of steps in a marathon is 55,374 for men and 62,926 for women. For a half marathon, it’s 27,687 and 31,463 respectively. Leaving aside that few […]
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see or hear the word marathon? Chances are it’s something to do with endurance. At the turn of the calendar year many articles compared our current global pandemic to a marathon. It makes sense because finishing a marathon and many aspects of pandemic life both […]
For the past couple of years – OK, decades – I’ve been driven by a desire to show up in the world in a different way. My shift from coach back to creative was well under way long before I became consciously aware of it in late 2019. It took 2020 to create the space. […]
My writing process is a little like the chicken and the egg. Sometimes the words come first, then I try to find a picture to go with them. Other days – like today – it’s the image that informs the words. I made this photograph in 2018, flying east from Palm Desert to Toronto, just […]
Perspective is a core principal in photography. You want to lead the observer into the frame. Leading lines are one of the best ways to do that. Context is a core principle in storytelling. When you provide enough context, the listener goes on the journey with you. I was writing quite a lot about context […]
There’s a conversation that keeps coming to mind today. I was driving home from an out of town event. Radio reception was inconsistent, except for the CBC. I tuned in during the middle of an interview. The topics being discussed connected a lot of dots in my mind. Within minutes, I pulled over to the […]
Unexpected themes and patterns emerged as I wrote chunks of my memoir. I’m not talking about my self-generated patterns and themes. Of course they are there, painfully – and sometimes hilariously – present. I’m referring to the moment it became clear that every system I’ve ever engaged with has – or has threatened to – […]
As you may know, I joined Seth Godin’s first run of The Creative’s Workshop last year because I wanted to start a daily blogging practice. Once I started writing every day in the workshop, my memoir began to come to life. In typical Laura fashion, I gave it all. Piling on the new to-dos, I […]
I thought I would hate a quiet Christmas. My first quiet Christmas happened in 2005. In the space of twelve months of that year, I set the intention to relocate from Toronto, Ontario to Kelowna, British Columbia. I made two trips in the spring to create the clients I needed to relocate my consulting business. […]
With selective focus, I can cut out the extraneous junk and keep focused on what’s most important. Any other Thanksgiving Monday I would have recuperating from hosting our family for dinner. But not this year. It’s 2020. At the beginning of the month I started an October creative project on Instagram. I named it – […]
Essential is not synonymous with valuable or your ability to make a difference. It might look different on the outside for now, and require some adaptation, but the value you bring comes from within. You and your work are essential to someone. (Just in case you needed a reminder.)
I didn’t know how to begin again. The mountain became insurmountable. Somewhere in the early days of summer I gave myself permission to take a break from this Daily Letter while I wrote a memoir. At first being quiet online was restful and allowed greater focus. The break extended into a hiatus. And then came […]
This is the fourth installment in a chapter or section of the book about my first trip to Sedona. Links to previous installments: First Trip to Sedona – Part One First Trip to Sedona – Part Two First Trip to Sedona – Part Three Crystal Magic My regret for not going to the Twin Towers […]
This is the third installment in a chapter or section of the book about Sedona, available to Patreon members only. Links to previous installments: First Trip to Sedona – Part One First Trip to Sedona – Part Two The red sandstone wasn’t the only rock I’d be exploring in Sedona. In between visits to the […]
