A month (pretty much) spent in water
Well, as many of you know that our older two kids have been trained with Infant Self Rescue(ISR) lessons since they were little toddlers/babies. Our girl is super comfortable in water and she loves spending time in the pool. I have always felt that if she could work on her strokes, she will be able to build up her strength more and enjoy water even more safely. However, with Covid last year, I did not feel comfortable sending her anywhere because, well, you just cannot wear a mask in water nor social distancing much at all. I was glad that I did not feel the pressure. I was able to get our middle one back to his proficiency in swimming all by myself last year and this year pretty much. I mean, he has been in lesson since he was one so he’s definitely got this.
This summer, I initially only signed up the two boys for swimming lessons thinking that I would not want to over schedule myself. However, when June came, with everything was happening, Jonny moved back to work in our house for a while. I realized that I just had to take the kids out of the house so they are not driving Jonny crazy or driving me crazy by having to keep them quiet. Since we are going out of the house anyways, I thought, might as well go swimming. So I ended up signing up my older two for swimming lessons through the city and my youngest with ISR to get him water proof.
So long story short, my days have been like this the entire month of June:
Swimming lessons—> Get a snack—> Lunch—> Quiet Time—> Swimming Lesson again.
And repeat.
Don’t ask me how many shades my kids are darker now compared to when summer started a month ago.
I know I have shared this in the last email but when I sent out the email, I was just notified that I am officially a mentor to the Click Community(formerly known as the Clickin Moms Forum). I did not know what exactly I am supposed to do and all the detailed benefits I was going to get yet. I probably should have known before I applied for the job huh. But oh well, here I am. It is really such an honor to be selected as a mentor. We currently have 18k+ active subscribers to the forum and a total of 1100+ ClickPros. And out of all the ClickPros, we currently have 36 Mentors and I am one of them. This is pretty huge for me. I have always doubted where I stand when it comes to photography. I did not get a degree in it. I only started to get kinda serious about photography about 5 years ago—compared to many people who can easily say I have been doing this for 20+ years, I am such a newbie. I actually only stumbled upon this genre of documentary family photography after we got back from China last year. And now, I am selected to teach.
I know I have always said that my childhood dream was to become a teacher. Of course, more in line of an engineering teacher. However, I have to say, the sound of photography mentor is pretty good to me too!
I definitely now have a lot of responsibilities to help on the forum, including a mandatory tutorial each month. Honestly though, I have been enjoying the pressure. You gotta learn something well before you could teach it well. There are already times when I started writing a tutorial and realized that I could not write it clearly with the language an 8 year old can understand. Or I did not have enough images to support what I was trying to teach—gotta do what you teach as an example! So I went back to shoot more content and to dig deeper on those subjects. It has been fun to learn.
As mentors, we do have the AMAZING benefit of free or low cost education. Even though I said earlier this year that I will just focus on my own doings rather than spending so much time taking classes as I was last year. Well, it literally didn’t last for even a month and now that I get to take classes at a low cost, sure enough, I already have lined up so many classes for the upcoming months and even years I think. As someone who did not really do that well in school in the past, I have to say, it is just so enjoyable when you are learning about something you really love.
Anyways. I know this is probably super boring to people who does not care as much about photography. However, it is just super exciting for me. Jonny says that this is the ultimate dream of Amy’s—getting unlimited free stuff. Haha. Touche!
Oh, btw, a random fact/life tip I learned from one of the mentors during our get to know you activity—if you wear sun glasses and cut the onion, you will not tear up. Well, I tried it and it worked! I literally did not shed even one tear! Well, I probably have shed some tears of joy but, you get what I mean. So yeah, I already love this group of women so much even if I only get this one tip on life from them.
Out of frustration one day about not knowing where to take the kids to that is not too hot and not too crowded, I decided to give Pogo Pass one more chance. I was so upset that they did not extend their passes for more months because a lot of the attractions were closed and none of the sports events happened. I felt like such a waste of money last year. However, with a family of 5 now, pogo pass is indeed the cheapest solution to having a sampler of all the fun stuff around town. So I swallowed my pride and got us all a pogo pass again. I immediately registered us all for a Diamondback MLB game as our family night activity. I’ve never been to a baseball game before and none of the kids had either. Dback has been having an awful season so we had a really empty stadium lol. It worked out well because my kids got to climb up and down the stairs. Dbacks actually won ending the 15-game losing record. They should pay us to watch their games more so they could win more!
On a side note, I tried to look up the Suns MBA west conference finals tickets and decided that you know what, maybe I’ll just subscribe to youtube TV or something and watch it at home. I did not realize how expensive those tickets are at this stage of the game! Anyways, now I know.
We seem to have come out of the crisis mode for now at least. I have learned that with mental health situations, no news is good news sometimes. We definitely still have challenges but I am so relieved that we seemed to have hit the rock bottom and now we are climbing out of the darkness. It is a good feeling for sure.
I don’t know if there is anything I could do to help raise awareness and become an advocate yet. I don’t think it’s the right time or if it will ever be a right time for me to do a photo essay on this subject. But I surely do hope that someone out there is doing a project/story on this subject and maybe one day I will be able to find a good angle to tell a story about this topic so it is no longer a taboo and we can have an open heart to accept both the good and the ugly side of this issue.
So there you have it! June has been pretty good. Still feels that times goes by way too fast these days and I definitely am still working on the art of slowing down. However, I have been enjoying getting up early in the morning. Jonny would never see this coming I guess haha. Honestly though, it has been a good feeling when I have already gotten stuff done by 8am. So thank you so much for the obligation that turned into my motivation to get up early.
Thank you as always for reading. See you next month!
PS. After two weeks, or even less, Jonny has gained a brand new level of appreciation towards his own office space in the basement at the mansion in the front. He has since moved back out of our little house for work. Well, the reason? Should be pretty obvious. I was a little sad that I was not able to get a picture when he was working here. But I am happy that he’s able to stay focused better these days at work!
