A New Dawn – My 2012 Starts NOW

Waiting for the first sunrise of 2012, Singapore

This was the first serious photo I took on the first day of 2012 – sure when the clock moved past 12 am I took a few shots of a group of friends, where I was, but essentially, this was the first photo of 2012 that was made, not taken.

I had stayed up the whole of the night, and by 6am, arrived in front of the Art / Science museum at Marina Bay, with my full set of gear and tripod. The storm clouds were moving rapidly across the sky, and it was quite a sight to behold. I setup the tripod quickly and took this first shot in haste for fear of missing the moment.

This first shot turned out to be my favorite. I proceeded to take a series of other photos with slightly changed angle of views but on looking through the entire set, this first photo that was taken with the heart, almost instinctively and in response to the moving clouds, stood out among those that were taken with the head, those where I put in a bit more thought into trying to get a better photo.

Sometimes, we don’t have to wait for perfect conditions before we do something. And this seems to be the message to me from God these past few days, that the year of 2012 had begun, and I don’t have to wait for the right conditions before I truly begin my year.

You see, I took a involuntary break from blogging for the entire month of December 2011. I was quite literally paralyzed – in thought, speech and writing inspiration. Despite the many good and happy things that have happened to me, 2011 will now be etched in me as the year where I lost a person I really loved, a year in which I underwent the greatest crisis of my life, even when the majority of the people around me had no clue as to what had transpired.

It was a year that began so promisingly in Europe.

New Year's Eve, Paris 2011

The Start of 2011, one year ago in Paris

My life had irrevocably changed. I am not sure if these are symptoms of depression but I no longer look forward to waking up, and had almost minimal to zero interest in whatever I was trying to do. Only my dog Whisky has the ability to keep me going – she is all I have now.

Whisky on the first day of the year 2012

The other thing that kept me going was to continually breathe just to survive, and as I had mentioned before, photography is breathing to me. The bare minimum to stay alive.

Yet photography is also a curse because with every image I see, it is harder to forget the associations with what was happening in my life.

Memories of Happier Times. Paris 2011

I could hardly dare to look back at the year of 2011. I wanted to do a “25 best pictures of 2011″ or a “Best of 2011″ kind of retrospective of photos but it was too much to ask of me. For now. Photographically speaking, it has to be possibly one of the most fruitful ones of my life. In my personal life, it was the pits, and a retrospective of pictures will cross into certain aspects of my personal life.

At the top of the world. Switzerland 2011

I just couldn’t do it. And because of that, I stopped writing in December of 2011.

Dawn breaking over Singapore on the first day of 2012

I had often preached from Jeremiah 29:11, that “…. God’s thoughts towards you are of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope…”. Now I need to really trust in what I believed in.

I don’t know what lies ahead. But I do know, I will walk on the path where God leads. And when I finally come to the end of my journey, perhaps I will get answers for all my questions in my life.

Walking into the unknown. Paris., 2011

Today, on the 5th of January, my year starts now.