It's Been One Month...

I miss my grandfather.  It has now been a month since he's passed away and it still doesn't quite feel like he's really gone.

I am thinking about all of the things that I've told myself to accomplish, spurred on by the unexpected passing of a man who was a father to me and I'm taking a step back to see how much I've done these past several weeks.

Some things are great: getting the website up, getting some photos taken, doing some research on jewelry venues.  Some things are still being tweaked: business cards, being able to reproduce some of my more recent designs, creating some long-term goals, getting my studio more organized.

I have a (better) copy of this photograph in my office:

This is my grandparents in their early twenties.  And I find it so amazing.  Did they know back  then, that they would raise three children and end up with a handful of grandchildren?  That they would go from China to Taiwan to Nicaragua to the United States?  That out of all the great cities and places they could have chosen to live in the US, that they would settle down in the San Francisco Bay Area and that their arranged marriage would bring them sixty five years together?

Looking at that photograph, I know they didn't.  No one could have really known what exactly their future held for them.  Sure, you can plan.  You can set goals for the next year, 5 or 15.  But you can't predict what each month, week or day will hold for you.  I guess in my long train of thought, the point in all this for me, is to try to live each day in action towards my goals and accepting that there will be backward steps with the forward steps.  I won't know what each day will bring for me, but I know that each one is an opportunity for me to make something of it...