For the past six months, I’ve been taking a photo a day. It’s intended to get me to pause and enjoy the moments of each day this year despite a busy schedule.

The colors at this produce stand made me pause and enjoy the scents of all the fruits and vegetables. (Photo by Cynthia Price)

During a recent vacation, it was quite easy to take a photo a day. I probably took 100 photos a day!

For the most part, I’ve not had a problem. I’ve found myself playing more with my photography and trying to figure out how to capture the smell of a spring day, the sound of leaves rustling in a tree before a storm or the smell of a peach cobbler fresh from the oven – all things that provided me with simple joy on a particular day.

Some days, though, it’s more difficult, especially on busy work days. And yet as I leave the office and think, “It’s 7 o’clock and I’ve yet to take a photo,” I rewind the day and realize there were many moments in the day, I could and should have photographed.

I now have an office with a window (my first one in 15 years!) so the view is always worth a photograph. Sometimes I wish I had photographed a great presentation (really!). One day I did photograph a colleague because we always made sure to smile when we saw each other. It was her last day before she moved out of the area and so we took a photograph with big smiles. That photo makes me smile.

Once in a while I think I’ll just stop the project. I’ve done it for six months, why continue? The answer is that I need to keep finding the joy and the moments in each day. It would be too easy to overlook them, and I don’t want to do that.

At the end of each week, I add the photo to a PowerPoint presentation I’m keeping for myself. One slide, one day, one photo. Of course, some days, I’ve actually put multiple photos on the slide. There are no real rules, except to find the moments each day.

I wonder what I’ll discover in the next six months?