Golden Web Lake – Get it from my shop onto your wall!

The golden lining is blurred out. I’m looking past all the beauty to the flawed, cracked parts. This is what I’ve been doing for months now.

Stuck searching for golden glue to fill the cracks. Where is it? All around me. Gold’s reflecting off of my skin and the surface of the water; all the while, I sink slowly past it… drawn to the cracks in the murky depths below.

Uselessly, I fill them. Not even gold lasts forever, though, and rising heat will eventually melt it away. Next time I’m angry or sad, rivers of gold will run down my cheeks, leaving the patched cracks hollow once again.

What if I stop trying to patch myself? Accept my flaws and just let them be flaws.

What if I let the gold that’s already there flow around me? Wash over me like the sunlight in spring after a long, cold winter.

What if, instead of trying to trap the gold and hold onto it forever, I just let it come and go?

It’s all too easy to take for granted the sunshine when there aren’t any clouds to fade its rays.

The next few photos I’ll be sending you were taken last year. I’ve been trying to send them to you since August, but… every time I sat down to write only dark, sad stories would come out of me. I didn’t want to be a drag, so I stayed silent instead.

This past summer was the beginning of a really difficult time in my life. Too many unexpected transitions for my change-resistant mind to process.

I had to constantly refocus on the things I was grateful for. There was so much gold in my life, but I couldn’t see because my perspective was narrowly focused on my problems.

I’m not gonna lie, it took effort to be grateful everyday. There would be days when I sat down to write and the cynic inside me flooded my mind with negative thoughts.

Ironically, some of the worst days were the most enlightening. In those moments when the only story I could tell myself was, “poor me,” I tended to look more closely at the things I took for granted. Clean water, food, and clothing are things I’ve never wanted for… and, sadly, they are the “little things” in my life that many people struggle for just to survive.

The short story is: I’m on the other side of another deep dip in my life, and I’m sure my daily gratitude practice helped me get through.

The golden lining is always around you, and it’s so easy to lose focus on it… just know it’s there… and don’t forget to glance over every once in awhile.

Did you know?

Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!

Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.