We came, we saw, we conquered Cape Cod, and boy oh boy, you are not only going to get one photo and one story today.

Maybe just one story. There was a strange sense of urgency with our Cape trip this year – and I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt it was different. I needed a vacation more than ever, and while a beach trip with kids is more of that – a trip – than a vacation, I definitely could have used seven more days in Truro. I’m super terrible at letting go. Apparently I do it every year when we go to Florida for a week, with some tweaking and scheduling and half-working, and I almost took nine days off when we went to Alaska (really, almost) but I’m not sure it’s in the cards. I have major FOMO (fear of missing out) with work stuff. And the influencer landscape is changing, but I’m changing with it. And the Cape Cod landscape is changing too.

I’d like to think I’m changing with that too. All you can do is try. Try and try again.

It was our first year with two dogs and we didn’t know until the last minute that we were bringing both. With my in-laws’ new house in Florida, and their house in Connecticut, I honestly didn’t/don’t know the fate of the Cape Cod house. I hope it’s always ours, or more likely – theirs. It’s not up to me, but boy, do I want this for them. More than I want most things.

So there was that strange sense of urgency, and there was a weight I don’t always have. A heaviness. It wasn’t a hopeless heaviness, though, like a dark and suffocating presence. It was more of an irritating heft on my chest and around my throat – telling me that I was ok and still had all that good stuff inside of me – but sometimes the demons come out before dark.

I believe in a future filled with light and airy and cotton candy things – at least most of the time. It’s so hard to figure out right this second how to get there. Work is heavy and cumbersome and strange, at times, and so is my indecision about the direction I want this family to go in. I think that’s ok because I’m figuring it out now, and like they said, love comes first.

We’ve got a lot of that. That’s the beginning and the end, and it all blurs together, quite like the sea.

We came back to the whirlwind of my birthday and house guests so I’m sneaking this post fairly late at night. I haven’t had the chance to upload my camera photos yet, and quite frankly, I still have ones to upload from last year and two years ago because I’m completely off my rocker with that. These are all my phone photos to share. My friend asked me why my phone photos don’t look like hers, and of course the #1 answer is that I study photography. This one (below) is edited for fun.

He was really looking out the window to watch Cassidy pump gas in a dingy gas station but I liked this better:

As for the rest of them, I hold my hands steady, use AE lock, and edit them in better apps than the ones in the iPhone. I love Snapseed, LensLight, and Bokeh Lens. All cost only a few dollars at most, and give photos more clarity and smoothness.

And you can reset horizon lines. All of it takes under a minute! (except for the gas station one..)

This is me linking up, as one of my favorite things to do, with Finish The Sentence Friday. This week’s topic is Photo Share Friday And there’s still time to write yours. Come link up with your spin: HERE. What’s your photo? What’s its story?

Have you been to a beach lately?