Taking A Chance
This is one of my favourite pictures I’ve taken this year… (but it almost didn’t happen)…
My birthday this year was a significant one. I wanted to mark the occasion by doing something I’d never done before and by going somewhere I’d never been before. But, once I booked the trip with Ocean Adventures to spend a week in the Great Bear Rainforest and the deposit was made, I almost instantly regretted it!
It’s funny how sometimes we want to do things, but we are also fearful of the unknown, and that can hold us back. Since I’m a Type 1 diabetic I was fearful that I might have some kind of diabetic emergency and would have to be airlifted out (many of the places we went on the boat were remote and inaccessible because of the timing of the tides in the inlets). But I’ve been diabetic for ten years and all the traveling I’ve done has been in the last ten years, and I’ve never had a diabetic emergency because I’m careful about monitoring my blood sugar. I had to be realistic that yes something could happen, but I know how to take all the precautions so that something doesn’t happen, so why not trust myself? (And, since I’m quite klutzy, the thing I should have been worried about was stepping into a hole while walking through a meadow of wildflowers wearing ill-fitting rubber boots and almost breaking my ankle…yes, it almost happened).
Then, there was the fact that I’ve never spent any significant time on the water. Sure, I’ve been on boats and ferries, but never for hours and hours, let alone, days at a time. Why did I think I would enjoy being on a boat for seven days?! And did I mention that there would be five other people on the boat that I didn’t know and we would be in close quarters for those seven days? What if we didn’t like each other? What if those seven days were spent hating the people I was sharing the experience with? But, really, we would share a love of nature and photography, at the very least, so even if we had nothing else in common, at least we shared that. (And, of course, it ended up that we all enjoyed each others company, and even had a few tears when we were saying goodbye on the dock at the end of the trip).
So, sometimes your desire for a new experience trumps fear. Sometimes you have to suspend your own disbelief and take a chance. It might work out or it might not, but at least you’ve had the experience.
It starts with an idea and that idea grows and then you take action to make it happen. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself and take a chance. The worst that could happen usually doesn’t come to be.
That’s the most significant thing I learned this year. That seems appropriate for a significant year.
prairie girl wonders 
Great photo. Please check out my blog at http://www.inspiringthroughthelens.com
And rightly so, beautiful!