#monthofkarate – My attempt at letting a picture tell a thousand words.

 

At the end of last year my longtime IRL and online friend, and fellow soprano, Beth, of This mixed up life, challenged me to participate in a photo a day project, hosted by Chantelle of  fat mum slim. I am not much of a photographer but I wanted to make sure I took some photos. After all my kids are growing up, I live in a place that gets great sunsets, I like to experiment in the kitchen, and so the list goes on. The main reason I took the project on, however, was as a mindfulness exercise, and an exercise in awareness and appreciation of the wonderful life I have.

So since the 1st of January 2016, I have been posting a photo every day, inspired by a specific daily prompt word (or in the case of July, letter or number). Because of my karate obsession many of my photos have been of or related to karate. I had some comments from fellow karate-ka, and even my instructor to the effect that they liked seeing posts and photos related to karate…..so I set myself a little challenge, because just using the prompts was starting to get too easy (um….well….not exactly, but starting to get comfortable at any rate….and we know how much I like staying in my comfort zone….not). So this month, (August), I have tried to relate each prompt to something about karate and martial arts. I have done my 28th post today. A walk in the park, it has not been; a mindfulness exercise and a period of reflection, (and even personal growth), it certainly has.

I had actually been thinking of doing something similar even before all this…..although probably I would have used words and not photos because words are more my thing. Ever since I read a post by Joelle at A beginners Journey which was relating a hamburger to karate (inspired by another martial arts blogger, Andrea, The martial arts woman, who implied that ANY topic could be related to martial arts), because, frankly, I agree with Andrea’s perspective.

Here are the prompts:

and here are my photos (and often overly verbose posts), so far: #monthofkarate. I have the last three to go….I think 29th will be easy…..I may well have to get creative and tenuous with the last one (have done that a few times this month…..so sue me).