Hobbies or Life,What's It Going To Be?

            Among my many talents, or faults depending on your point of view, I have a hobby that I find totally relaxing. In moments of stress I go off in my own little world "doing my thing" and it calms the chaos in my inner being, enough so that I can come back to the real world and act like a quasi-sane person. I like to take photos. I usually like the scenic photos, but I will snap a picture of anything given half a chance . Taking photos is a relatively new hobby for me and now, in this digital age, it is quite inexpensive to dabble in it on a regular basis. There is a great difference between the me that is taking photos and the me that everyone meets on an ordinary regular basis. In the process of getting the picture and developing it at my local drugstore photo kiosk I am a very different person, I am physically stronger while getting the photo, I come back spiritually recharged, and I am definitely mentally quicker than when I woke up that morning. Especially after spotting the perfect picture, getting it on camera, and getting it developed that same day. Only cost 29 cents but the benefits to me are priceless.
            I have always liked taking photographs, but with the 35 mm rolls that had to be sent off to be developed, which cost an arm and a leg, I never really had the time or the money unless it was a special occasion such as a wedding, funeral, or a school play. A couple of years ago I was given a small digital camera by my company when I started my new job as a newspaper delivery person. This was so that when I was out and about delivering papers and happened on a story, I could get some pictures to go with it. From that moment on, when I realized how easy it was to take the pictures, develope them right there in the store and it took just a few moments to get it done, I was hooked like a hungry trout in a river full of fishermen. I especially love to take photos of the sunrise and since I travel through three counties in Maine, at different times of the morning, I often have the opportunity of doing so. When snapping my photos, I become so totally focused on getting the picture, I am not aware of the rest of my surroundings. I am not afraid to crawl out on a tree limb to get a different angle of the stupid bird that flew off anyway, or to follow the stream flowing off the side of a mountain to see where the water ended up and maybe catch the sun off the water or something. I have snapped a few of those. In my ordinary life I can't focus on a gnat and have to look at the road when I step off the curb for fear of falling, but put a camera in my hands and a sunrise in front of me and I am someone totally different, fearlessly focused and driven to get the shot. I allow nothing, not even time to get in the way of my quest. I do not understand why that is, I only know that if I want a shot with my camera no branch is too small, no mountain to steep, or water too cold for me to try to get my shot.
              After taking the perfect shot or I should say thinking I did I hurry through the rest of my paper route, or whatever else I am doing, and get to my local drugstore as quick as I can while hoping I don't have to knock anyone off the developing kiosk that is my favorite one. It is the one that prints them out right then and there. I remove the little card out of my camera, then as if I was Dorothy stepping out of the house over the rainbow, there is another world for me, full of color and light. As I am cutting and cropping and adding a bit more of color to this picture or subtracting some of the glaring light off a body of water in that one, I tap into my personal creativity, which generally, in the dull humdrum of my life, is damn near strangled right out of me. It helps that I have the computer right there and can reset and do over, if I don't like this or that thing that I have done to the original picture. I can edit my photo and keep both versions of it  although I do that on a hit and miss basis since my jinx with mechanical stuff still applies. When I am completely done withall the photos I want developed I walk out of the store grabbing my little treasures and more alert than I have felt all week. I have gotten into the habit of balancing out my check book on these days as for some reason it goes smother for me at this time. I try to balance it right to the penny. Sometimes I succeed. I also can figure out my budget and I often remember all the bills in my budget. I think there is truth tto the fact that artmakes you think. I certainly prove it when I am done with my pictures.
            Spiritually the quest to take a perfect picture is like beginning an adventure. I am alone when I am picture snapping usually and happy to be out in the woods and in the elements. Something about walking in the woods fills me full of life. Maybe it is the smell of the air, hearing the wind, feeling the sunshine on my face listening to the sounds of nature, but when I walk out of the woods I am so full of life that my hair is just about standing on its' ends. If it were possible I literally soak the life of the woods in through my pores. I come home happy full of life, love and an appreciation for all the living beings around me. I am literally in love with life at that point, and those endorphins or whatever it is that I am so high on, last me for days.  I don't know of anything that charges me up like that if there ever was anything in my life that did.
           Taking photos for me is the best hobby that I have ever found for myself. Maybe someone else feels the same about a different hobby such as building birdhouses or collecting stamps, or a different place, like the beach or the desert. For me nothing will ever come close to the way I fel when I am taking a picture of the sunrise over a small pond or the sun coming up behind the mountains. I am constantly amazed at the beauty all around me and the fact that tomorrow I will wake up and there will be another sunrise just for me to take a picture again. Tomorow I will be able to emerse myself in the color and the light of the morning sunrise, and my body, my mind, and my spirit will be renewed and ready to face another few days of the dull drudgery of my day to day existance. My hobby is a part of me now, as important to me as going to church sometimes. I feel closer to my God out there in the vast expanses that He has created, then I ever really have in any of the buildings I have worshipped in. After all He made the sunrise just for me to photograph.