Wow, look at that
It snowed here this week.
Totally unexpectedly.
Unexpected for me, that is. For the people who checked the weather forecast it was probably of no surprise, but on Tuesday morning, when I set off on my walk to work, I had no idea.
I was about fifteen minutes in when the first specks started to fall. Five minutes later, when it was really coming down, I thought about heading back.
I was half way between work and home.
My jeans were wet, my hair sticking to my face, and I knew carrying on would mean sitting in the office in wet clothes, hoping the snow would stop so I wouldn’t have to walk back home in it.
The sensible thing would’ve been to go and get the car.
Take the fifteen minute walk home, change, drive to work in dry clothes.
But I was not sensible.
I walked the rest of the way because it was so lovely.
The air had an electricity to it, the light strange, a kind of blueish tint to it, and it was so silent. How could I not stay out in the snow?
My landscape had changed. The snow did what it always does and presented my surroundings in a new way.
I found myself marveling at the field I always walk past, stopping to look at the dusting on the ground, the gate I had just walked through.
On the winding lane that leads to the office, I stopped to take the photo I’ve put up here.
A small truck drove up. It had scaffolding in the back and was on its way to one of the houses that’s being renovated.
I went to let him pass, and as he slowed down, he wound down his window to speak to me.
‘Makes everything beautiful, doesn’t it?’ He asked and I nodded, raised my phone in agreement at the photographs I was just taking.
We shared a smile, he drove away and as I walked the last stretch to the office, I wondered why it took a snow day to make me really see what was in front of me again.
It made me realize I’d become a bit blind to the beauty that was all around me.
When we first moved to the Lake District, for the first year every day was a ‘wow look at that!’ moment in some way or another.
The light on the fells as a backdrop to the school run. The winding roads that are so narrow, you have to reverse for ages if another car comes along. The wildlife that shows it’s head at every opportunity. The wide open spaces.
‘Wow, look at that!’
It was all around me and I’m no longer seeing it. I’m listening to a podcast or audio book, head down, navigating the rocks and tree roots underfoot, blind to it all.
I remember reading something, I forget where, or who said it, but it was along the lines of how you should change one small habit every day.
If you always sit in a certain place to eat your breakfast, sit somewhere else. If you always have a sandwich for lunch, have something else. If you always take a certain commute to work, go a different way.
The idea being that it would stop the oblivion that comes with repetition. The ‘going blind’ to what is in front of you.
After the snow day, I’ve decided I’m going to do it.
Only slight things, stuff like where I sit at the dinner table, what seat I have in the lounge. What I eat on a weekly basis, that kind of thing.
I’ll try a different route to work, it might take me a little longer, but it will also make me take note.
And I’m going to bring it into my digital habits.
I’m going to change up how I post, how I scroll, how I engage and interact on the platforms in an effort to bring a freshness to them. I’m going to go through my follower list, cull anyone who doesn’t fit, follow some fresh accounts who inspire me and when I stop at a post and take notice, I’m going to work out why.
Do you remember when Instagram first came along? The first time you used a filter? The first TikTok you saw that you had to share? The first time you saw a sneak peak into your friends holiday on Facebook?
It was all kinds of ‘wow look at that.’
I know that people have become ‘blind’ to my posts. That I’m in a long line of content that is before someone’s eyes but not really being seen.
What can I do to make my posts go through a ‘snow day?’ What can I change so that they’re noticed with a fresh lens?
It’s something to think over, to wonder what changes we can make to our content so someone who looks at it stops, and goes, ‘wow look at that!’
Have a brilliant weekend,
Zoe x