Sea Swimming Blog #75

Day 443 Sea Swimming.

#75 of the blog.

Air Temp 9 degrees - Wind W 9mph - Sea Temp 9.2 degrees

Thursdays are all about sea swimming with my mum.

After doing some head shots this morning and then teaching photography in the early afternoon, the plan was to meet up with her and go for our routine dip at Boulay Bay.

Rewind an hour or so earlier, I’d been inspired by an image I’d seen online and thought I would create something of a similar vibe for today’s sea swimming blog post…

We normally have a bit of time and aren’t in a rush but today my gran needed to be picked up and so my mum only had half an hour to get the swim done… “no worries” I said, I just need to take a photo.

I then proceeded to take about 15 minutes trying to set up a shot, without lighting, then with lighting, with a tripod, without a tripod, asking my mum to stand in a certain position whilst I focussed, then “hold don’t move!”, test shot, “mmm… it’s not quite what I planned”, then “ok you can move”, then trying to get into the same spot myself, another shot, reviewing the shot, hating the shot, taking another shot, and another, and another… “you know what, this isn’t going to work”.

I told my mum to go into the sea ahead of me as I started packing up my extravagant, over-the-top set up… cursing myself for not getting what I was after.

Then, I remembered this mornings ‘Moment’.

Every morning around 7:30am I get a little notification that today’s ‘Moment’ is available to listen to.

I received it from the ‘Waking Up’ App (a practical and theory based meditation App designed by neuroscientist, philosopher and best selling author Sam Harris).

Today’s stated something along the lines of:

Take note of the worst moment of your day… a moment when you feel anger, sadness, or some negative emotion. Now imagine for a second that everyone and everything you love was gone… and now, imagine it back again. Imagine the number of people around the world who would swap places with you in an instant… even in your worst moment.

After the flash back to this mornings message of positive thinking, I quickly dismissed the whole ‘didn’t get the shot thing’, looked up and saw my mum, strolling into the water.

Roughly a year into her own sea swimming journey, like myself she uses the power of the sea to energise, maintain and heal, and I thought myself incredibly grateful and lucky to be able to share moments like this with her.

Whilst it’s hopefully many years away, life won’t always be like this so it’s important to treasure these times while we can.

Mindset flipped, I snapped a few more for good measure and had another moment with mum and the water to remember.

“Your first 10,000 photos are your worst”

- Henri Cartier-Bresson