One of the ways you can show appreciation is to your former self. Sure we have regrets, but there are also things that you really should thank your former self for. For pushing when things got tough, for picking up a skill that has paid off multiples times over, for the qualification that meant you can do a certain job. There are plenty of reasons to be thankful.

Then one area where I am thankful is for picking up my photography hobby. I’ve been doing photography on and off for at least ten years now, and I just broke out this old lens I had forgotten I had gotten cheaply a few years back. It’s a vintage lens that at the time I was really into, crazy beautiful bokeh (some of the older shots on my Instagram were shot using it).

Today I remembered I also had a vintage zoom lens. I remembered precisely because I thought I saw snow on Mt. Chokai and wanted to check for sure. Turns out it was just light reflecting and wasn’t actually snow, but it reminded me of a simpler time when I was happy just getting photos (although I did originally buy my a6500 for the 4K video function).

If I hadn’t followed my passion all those years back, I wouldn’t have been able to do that right now. My blog and YouTube channel would have been much harder to start off as well (although you can always just use free stock photography). Thanks past me.