19 for 2019: update for week 4

19 for 2019: Week of 21 January 2019

My photo library collapsed last Sunday and this caused me a heap of chaos.

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Friday sunset after a horrendous bushfire day in Tasmania. Puts things into perspective.

I was able to restore the library from a week-old backup and the photos were archived as well, so I didn’t lose them, which was an enormous relief.

The old software is obsolete and unsupported and I had only stuck with it because it worked for the way I structured my workflow. But it being so old, there will come an operating system upgrade that will no longer support that software and I won’t be able to use it. So I need an alternative. I’d been planning on keeping my old system in place and moving gradually over to Lightroom with just a few sets of photos so I could learn as I went. However, with the library collapse, I had a rethink of what I was going to do. I’ve decided that everything that I haven’t catalogued in the old system plus all my new photos will go into Lightroom. My learning curve has very quickly gotten steeper because I’m having to use it every day and do a lot more things than I thought I was going to have to at this time.

I guess it’s good in a way because it’s forcing me to use it and learn it right now. If I didn’t have to do that, chances are I would have put it off and stuck with the old system until the day I couldn’t use it anymore and would have had to make a move to a new system I had no idea how to use. So, thing 19 is well underway. I spent a lot of time getting familiar with Lightroom this week, and I discarded the folio I had set up earlier and made a new one that I think will be easier to manage (thing 12). I printed two photocollages from 2018 and one from this year and made the week 35 photocollage. 35 down, 17 weeks to go (thing 11).

I changed thing 6. I had a 12-week fitness program that I signed up to, started and never completed a couple of years ago and I wanted to attempt that again this year. But I’ve had a bit of time to think and decided it’s not the approach I want, need or am comfortable with right now so instead, I’m going to follow a year-long wellbeing program that introduces small, manageable, lifestyle changes each week that I will do my best to embed into my daily life. My aim is to work through the program and not do everything suggested, but to take one small change each week and really focus on implementing that.

This week it was to increase my water intake because it’s summer, it’s hot and I’m not drinking enough water. Strategy one is to fill my water bottle at night and put it right next to my walking shoes so I can have a drink before I go out for my walk without having to find my way to the kitchen and locate a glass. Like I said, small steps. Baby steps, even.

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Baby steps

My morning routine includes a walk, some quiet minutes meditating with Insight Timer (go check this out if you want a nice, free tool for establishing a meditation practice) and, as of last month, reading at least 20 pages. This is an idea I got from James Clear and it’s so simple I can’t believe I hadn’t figured it out for myself every time I glanced guiltily at my unread books piles (yes, piles plural).  I am currently onto book four for 2019 (thing 5). It is a fiction book

I completed the online writing course I was doing for work (thing 8). Now to start to use the tools in my own writing and try to improve it.

I went to the beach one morning to experiment with long exposure photographs before the sunrise made it too light. I completed that assignment for the photo course (thing 1) and started to do some research into ND filters (thing 7) so I can make these photos during the day, not just at 5.30 am.

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Long exposure, Wednesday morning

It’s been a frustrating week, but I think I’ve done a reasonable amount of groundwork to build on.

Status for week 4

  • Things completed: 2 (1 this week)
  • Things I progressed: 7
  • Things started but not progressed this week: 1
  • Things not started: 9

Things completed

  • Thing 9 (9 January)
  • Thing 8 (21 January)
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