Time management

This here rockpool is one spot Mum used to take me all the time as a kid to splash around in with my brother. You’ll find it in that small stretch of sand between Surf Beach and Denhams Beach, near Batemans Bay, NSW.

(Shot on Samyang 7.5mm fisheye on an Olympus OM-D EM-1, ISO 400, 1/1600s about f5.6 or f8. September 24 at 6.14am.)

FINALLY  got a minute to take some holiday days last week. It worked out really well as the day before I left I got the nod from the shoulder surgeon that my fracture had healed okay and I’d be right to drive and shoot and make pictures again. 

It was such a relief to hit Batemans Bay. I got down to Surf Beach before sunrise (which wasn’t that hard, Mum and Dad’s house is only a 30-second walk away) with a couple of cameras and shot my way through it.

I cannot remember the last time I did that: shot my favourite camera with my favourite lens on my favourite beach. Which seems really silly. Why don’t I do this more often? What’s stopping me?

I could explain it away with a few practical reasons — work, kid, family, more WORK, — but that’s not really WHY.

Truthfully, I don’t know why ... yet ... but I’m working on it. 

But here’s some things I do know: life is finite and you can run out of road real fast. I was working late on paperwork when our two-year-old kid pointed to a map in a book and said “Australia” for the first time. I wanted a fisheye lens so bad all my 20s and my family gave me one when I turned 30, but it wasn’t until this week — THIS WEEK — as a 33 year old — THREE YEARS LATER, that I got around to getting to my favourite beach literally meters from my Mum’s house to make some pictures with it.

Do you ever feel this way, too?

Do you ever think about what are we doing with our short lives?

Or maybe more importantly, what  aren’t we doing with our lives?