Then that girl got an iPhone that took great pictures and fit in her pocket, so she abandoned the "real" camera for the convenience of the iPhone camera.
The girl's kids grew older, and while they were more active than ever before, they also developed wild opinions about being the subjects of their mom's photography obsession. In addition, as they aged, they tended to go off and play with their friends more often rather than hanging out with their Mom. The opportunities for photographing them were fewer than ever before. The girl could no longer place one of the kids on a pretty quilt on the front lawn, adorn them with freshly picked flowers, and snap a hundred photos of a hundred different sweet or silly faces.
The girl seemed to get more and more "busy" with life... with her job, with her home and her yard, with her gardens, with helping her kids with homework and piano practice, with driving kids to and from dance class and football practice and piano lessons and soccer practice and choir practice and 4-H meetings.
The girl loves special, cheerful and unique things and allowed her home to become an unfortunately overwhelming collection of goods, of clothes the kids will grow into eventually and clothes that she will hopefully someday fit into again, of garage sale goodies, unique finds, and sentimental treasures. The collected things started taking more and more of the girls time - things to be put away, things to be organized, things to be repainted and repurposed, things saved with good intention.
The girl's hard-working farmer husband got busier with the family farm, found hobbies that became passions and seemed to take up a surprising amount of his time.
The girl's "projects" grew and grew in number, adding more gardens, bigger ideas, wilder imaginings, even adding a eclectic flock of chickens to the family. Soon there was so much to do, the girl had no time for her former interests and passions, no time for photography, for scrapooking, for blogging, for updating and maintaining social media accounts. The girl fell out of touch with old friends who were also "busy", who also became overwhelmed, overworked, and overscheduled.
...but deep inside this girl's heart, the desire to write, to photograph, to create, to share stories remained. Occasionally it tapped softly on the girl's shoulder, just reminding her that it was still there, waiting for her whenever she was ready. It's funny how after months and even years, those story-telling habits remain. How stories are strung together in her head as she goes about her day... how when she does take photographs, they are thoughtfully captured to tell the story of that moment, of that adventure, of that day. The words form in her mind, the introduction written in her head, edited, reworded...
...and there the story remains, in her mind and in her heart. Hoping someday it will be told.
