Castelo De Belmonte – Belmonte, Portugal

Willow Lake & San Francisco Peaks ...at the end of golden hour. I went back to a somewhat better vantage point with my Sigma zoom at 220mm. Willow Lake is a reservoir in the Granite Dells in Prescott, AZ and the snow covered San Francisco Peaks are the remains of a dormant stratovolcano North of Flagstaff (about 65 miles NE).

in another universe, i'm not so stuck up on the past. i would know to enjoy the present moment and not long for the one that ended a long time ago.

During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.

Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.

I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.

When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.

So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.

Reason to Live #9490

 Boiling some noodles and having a nice night watching shows.  – Guest Submission

(Please don’t add negative comments to these posts.)

People say “phase” like impermanence means insignificance. Show me a permanent state of the self.

brought some fruit for the potluck

I am a chronic turn signaller. People will be like “there’s no cars around.” Wrong, I’m

1. letting pedestrians know.

2. I’m doing this in case I missed a car or person somewhere, or

2b. I’m gonna be stuck at this intersection til a car or person shows up

3. It makes it a habit

Life has been good to me lately, thank you 🫶

Mushroom Rainbow by Alissa Allen