Favors and The Color Purple

Today was a long day but a good day. I started the day by doing a favor for a friend and shooting his girlfriend. It was a fun day where I met new talented hair and stylist that I will definitely hire on my upcoming assignments. The energy was great during the entire shoot and my subject was very comfortable in front of the camera.

It's always a good feeling to do favors from time to time, but make sure you don't give yourself away too much as time is the only thing you can not get back. Make sure everyone knows how valuable your time is and the sacrifice your made to do so. Nothing in life is free and even when you give your time to other you're sacrificing your time, and time is truly money. In a lot of cases its more valuable than money.

After my shoot I took a break and then spent time doing something I've started to take seriously,.........study Japanese. Each day at 7:00 pm I'm devoting my time to study Japanese for an hour. I've set alarms on my phone to remind me to study so when I hear my alarm, - which is in Japanese - I stop what I'm working on and study. The reason I've taken my studies more seriously is because of my last trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona. The drive was long and I was in a vehicle with my Japanese girlfriend and two of her friends who were in town visiting and into photography. It was great to have all of us shooting with different perspectives and camera's but it was impossible to communicate and I felt what it was like to be an outsider. It felt weird to hear everyone laughing and having great conversation when I had no clue what was being said. At first my girlfriend tried to translate but an hour into the trip that got old and I told her not to worry about it.

Learning anything new is exciting no matter what your age. I believe in setting goals in life and being constantly aware of them each day. I'm teaching my step son to do the same. Years ago a friend told me his daily goal was to know more when he went to bed then he knew when he woke up. I never forgot that and now my step son's first goal is that. I've put it in his bedroom and ask him daily what his goal is. Little by little it sinks in. Today, I've learned more Japanese than I knew this morning. I'm learning through Rosetta Stone and I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a language. Today as I learned to speak I also learned to write in Japanese. I took it a step further and borrowed from the movie "The Color Purple" and placed cards around my house written in Japanese to help remember things. Funny but it works. Tomorrow when I start my day with a glass of みず I will see the characters and become more familiar day by day.

Got to love the Color Purple.

Always Dream Big