Keep your footing.

Anybody who has been alive longer than a millisecond knows that life can veer in any direction in the blink of an eye without warning. 

There you are, minding your own business, 

and you turn the corner and stumble upon a loved one you haven't hugged in months.

You scratch off that one last silver square on a winning lottery ticket. 

You open a large envelope and unfold the paper to read "Congratulations...".

Your car smashes into a concrete median on the highway. 

Your significant other looks you in the eye and says "I think we should break it off." 

You wake up to a family member on the phone telling you that the person closest to you just passed away. 

Ever since that phone call, I've been paranoid about when I'll hear my phone ring again and what the person on the other end has to say. It's made me more appreciative of the moments I am surrounded by people that care; the moments when I'm positive that they are okay and smiling. It has helped me brace myself for the best and the worst, and it caused me to grow up a lot.

Good or bad, the unexpected can knock anyone off his or her feet. I guess all I can say is keep your footing. You're not alone.

A new phase.

       For the past thirteen months, I have fidgeted with anxiety as the 11th of each month approached, marking one more month I've struggled through life without my mom. Every 11th, I would pour my heart out in a paragraph and publish it to my Facebook wall, awaiting the much-appreciated emotional support from friends and family.
       Today, I looked at my calendar--and my jaw dropped. It's the fifteenth. February 11th, 2012 had passed me right by without any intensified heartache.

       Today, I realized that I'm actually,
                                                                             finally
                                                                                          ...moving on.

Drama Queen.

      I still have my ups and downs. When I'm feeling low, I don't know when I can expect to have a positive outlook again. Still, whenever friends ask me if I'm okay, I'll say I am. If I tell them how I actually feel, I think I'll scare them away or even make myself more depressed. I guess I'll just keep this facade rolling until I can't push anymore.

Herbie meets Chimi.

      My friend Alaina recently got a puppy and named him Chimichanga. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to introduce him to my bunny Herbie. I suffered from cute overload.

It was meant to be.

Puppy + bunny = ♥

Chimi and his mommy snuggle.

Grace.

      Today in my Special Effects Photography class, we photographed a ballet dancer, Hannah, with strobes, capturing beautiful motion sequences.

The white bars on top and bottom are caused by the lights and white reflectors placed on the left and right of Hannah. I rotated the camera for this spiral effect.

This was taken with the same rotating method as the image above, only with a wider zoom.

Becoming well-rounded.

       I am currently taking a 2D Design class at RIT; it revolves around creating art with two-dimensional concepts. This is a project I just finished. We started out by distorting a picture of ourselves to create a "monster", then recreate it via textured collage. For my collage, I used different tones of the same image of fire for my skin, water for my shirt, and wood for my hair. I used soft images of glitter and wispy clouds for the background to give it the illusion of depth of field that a photograph may have. I went literally insane creating this, and I may have consumed too much glue one way or another, but I'm happy with the result.

The original photograph:

Voilà: