Aaron Outward: Rolling with the Punches

I was driving to Guelph on Monday for an appointment with my sleep doctor and as I was driving I began to reflect. First, I began reflecting on this blog. Although, I started it when I was first diagnosed I really didn't get serious with it until November 1st last year. Since then it has grown much bigger in a year than I had imagined possible. I am not one of the bloggers that is always checking my stats out as an ego boost, although I would be lying to say I didn't used to (at one time or another everyone gets obsessed with it :) ). With that said I am always looking to grow this blog with readership that enjoys what I have to say.

This thought pattern slowly morphed over to how the blog has evolved. It was originally just a place to update friends and family on my progress so I didn't have to write a million emails. Eventually the progress updates got farther and farther apart but everyone liked hearing from me so I started adding some of my thoughts to my posts. From there it has merged to what the blog is today, reflections and lessons that my journey with cancer has taught me about life. What I like most about it now is that it is applicable to everyone, you don't have to have cancer to get something from this blog...In fact, the goal is you use the reflections and lessons in your own lives to make positive changes instead of waiting for that catastrophic event to cause you to start making drastic changes.

I continued my reflection and started thinking about the past 6 weeks or so and was trying to come up with an idea to write about. I started thinking about what my recovery from the bone marrow transplant can teach us about life. The first thing that came to my mind is it is HARD. I wanted to dig deeper though because you don't need cancer to tell you life is hard. What has made the recovery the hardest is the unexpected challenges that come along. I wasn't prepared to have as a slow of a recovery as this has been. I half expected to be back to normal after a couple months.

But again I came back to the point we don't need cancer and a BMT recovery to hi-light that we have to deal with unexpected difficulties in our lives, that is just part of the wonderment of living. My mind was churning now though, because it wasn't just about the unexpected difficulties, the recovery process has them just like life but the duration you fight them is magnified for so much longer. And there it was, my AHA moment. My recovery is teaching me most how to deail with the unexpected difficulties or "punches" life throws our way.

What makes any difficulty hard is the the duration we have to deal with it. They can quickly lead to disapointment and then slowly morph over time into the worst thing, negativity. So how do we get through these difficult times? Well with my 4 P's of Positivity of course (if you are newer to the blog, the P's can be found here: 4 P's of Positivity :) By using these simple tools we can slowly fight off the negative energy that builds through our difficult times.

I thought I would give an example to hilight a difficult time that we just recently used the 4 P's to help get through. On Monday after my appointment I was planning to go take some photographs with my Mom, in and around Guelph. It had been crappy weather all weekend leading up to it, and Monday was the only day of the week that looked like nice weather. I have been trying to get some nice fall pictures before the leaves disappear and I thought this was the perfect day.

Well needless to say, the weather wasn't very nice. It was beautiful on my drive in to Guelph, getting me all excited for the day of shooting but as soon as I walked out of the doctor's office the clouds changed and it became super overcast, cold, and windy. My mom and I weren't deterred though because for the two years we have been trying to do photography we have been stopped by rain everytime except once. So with the rain not out we went out anyways even though we both had some disapointment. Instead of letting the disapointment turn to negative feelings I rationalized the day using the 4 P's.

First, I made peace with the fact that beautiful landscapes weren't in the cards for the day. We would just have to roll with it, because there were definitely great pictures to be had. Next, putting everything in perspective, I was actually out of the house with my camera for only the third time in weeks. So really life wasn't that bad compared to the past little bit. Passion is always easy for me when I have my camera in my hands. Using it fills me with an electricity of energy. And then finally I realized our purpose was to just get great shots regardless of type.

In the end we had a fantastic afternoon of shooting all the wonderful architecture around guelph, and just enjoying the outdoors. The best part was as I was driving home was that I realized it wasn't just the bmt recovery that was teaching me how to deal with difficulites but regular life was teaching too.

Here are some my best shots from the day. Do you have any favourites?