Get A Little Perspective

Hi, Gang!  Let’s all get a little perspective today.

I’m back.  In Seattle.  At least for a couple of weeks.

If you follow my ridiculousness on Facebook, you’ll be all too aware that I just got back from a road trip to California; and while I was on the road I bombarded you with a flood of status updates that included – but were not limited to – my run-ins with the boys in blue, multiple images of my feet, eating adventures, random thoughts, my favorite shots of the day, and the oh-so-popular Housesitters Reports.  I am sure that your news feed is thrilled that it has been able to breathe again since I returned.  I should mention that Florence got the most fan mail despite the fact that she reportedly spent most of the time I was gone staring at the dishwasher or wondering what was happening.  Maybe she needs her own Facebook page.  Mr. McHenry already has his own Instagram page/

You may not know this about me; thinking about it, you almost certainly don’t know this about me, and would never guess it from the podcasts or Facebook or my little blogette right here.  I’m an introvert.  Truth.  My road trips are critical to my very survival – they literally stop me from going crazy.  Driving solo for {very} long distances turns my world the right way up; and even though I am working on shooting assignments, my road trips are when I do all my major thinking, and I find my brain exploding with insights and ideas and realizations that it doesn’t usually get a chance to explore.

I’m guessing that an awful lot of people see LowCarb / LCHF / KETO / SANE and a host of other lifestyles as restrictive.  They see what they can’t have and feel like it must be a miserable life of denial, struggle, and suffering.  They think that in order for variety to be the spice of life – and for food not to get boring – they need to be able to eat every foodstuff there is available.  They wonder what on earth they are going to eat if they can’t eat flour and sugar.  There’s nothing left, right?  At least there’s nothing left that’s tasty or worth eating.  I’ve been mulling over this concept for a year now, and considering how to help people gain a new perspective on the whole your-life-is-not-over-because-you-don’t-eat-wheat-or-sugar thing.

One day, after shooting mainly landscapes in the wilds of central California for 3 days, I decided on a whim that I was going to limit myself to only shooting with my macro lens.  I declared it Macro Day – getting {really} up close and personal with my surroundings.

For a while I was stumped, wondering, ‘What am I going to shoot?”  Then almost immediately it struck me.  I was going to have to look at the world in an entirely new way.  I was no longer looking for compelling compositions that stretched across miles of land.  I had to look for things that I normally pass right on by without a second glance, and work out how to make them into a compelling image.  I would have to look at ordinary objects in a whole new way.  I would need to look for details that I never knew existed before.  And it was awesome.

Get a little perspective!

The exercise gave me whole new perspectives on life, the universe, and everything; and how often does do we let that happen??  Get a little perspective!

Turns out I didn’t have to drive for hundreds of miles every day to get compelling images.  On Macro Day I didn’t get more than 3 miles from the condo; and yet I shot 3 times as many images as I had in the previous 3 days combined – those 3 days having involved driving over 1100 miles.

Then came the flowers.  Before I knew it I was lying upside down in the street – completely oblivious to the world rushing by me, and completely engrossed in my work.  And it was awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I learned that limitations make you more creative, not less creative.  And that is a really, really, really great thing.  I saw things in a way that I had never looked at them before.  I saw detail and beauty that I had previously missed.

I thought about how this is exactly like converting to a specific dietary lifestyle.  How developing uber-healthy recipes has made me far more creative, simply because I have less to work with; and yet I’ve had countless people tell me that my recipes taste better than the food they ate when they were eating “regular” food.  Eating in a particular way forces me to get creative in the kitchen.  And what initially seemed like a huge struggle, has turned out to be a mesmerizing journey in creativity.  It makes me constantly think, “How can I make something totally tasty with only these ingredients at my disposal?”  And when recipes – especially baked goods – don’t turn out the way I had hoped, the limitations compel me to figure out how to make them work, instead of giving up or turning to unhealthy alternatives.

When we limit ourselves we see and find more possibilities, not less.

I’ve eaten more almonds in the last 6 months than in the rest of my life put together.  Who knew those rather boring-looking nuts could get whipped into so many fabulous concoctions?

And when you’re faced with upping the amount of veggies you consume drastically, you discover veggies you never knew existed.  You find ways of preparing veggies that you never imagined before.  You find ways to get veggies into every thing you eat, even though you may not even have liked veggies very much before.

And it is awesome.

If a doctor had told me 18 months ago that I had to switch to a gluten-free diet because of an allergy or other health issue, I would have thought my life was over.  I could not have imagined life without bread, or pasta or cupcakes.  And then remove sugar too??  NO WAY.  I would have been in complete despair.  Then I met Jonathan and read The Calorie Myth and started focusing on eating  the healthiest and most nutritionally dense foods, and I found myself several months later eating a completely grain-free, sugar-free diet without even realizing it.  I hadn’t focused on what I couldn’t eat, I focused on discovering the unknown joys of all the things I could eat.  My life was changed as a result of the things I ate; and I hadn’t felt deprived, not once.  Get a little perspective.

Similarly with my macro exercise.  I focused (ha ha!) on what I could shoot up close, not on what I couldn’t shoot.  My life was changed as a result of the things I saw; and I didn’t feel deprived, not once.  In fact, my day exploded with creativity and thinking; and most of my favorite images of the trip I shot on the day I imposed limitations and saw things from a different perspective.  And it was awesome.

Get a little perspective: Change your perspective and you change your whole world.

 

{Love the images and want to hang them on your wall? Click on each image to go to the gallery!}

 

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