My Life Through a VSCO Filter

I'm finding it really interesting how I document my life online, particularly through Instagram. I love photography, and I find the pairing of pictures and words to be a wonderful way to express myself. 

Looking back on my posts can be a bit peculiar. I see times when I was honest, and times where I put on a happy face and pretended all was well. I see true joy and dark sadness. I see the rise and fall of seasons, emotions, and events. I see what I deemed in my mind to be important, and I see all that I left out. I see how my pictures and posts have changed and evolved as time passes. 

I truly enjoy how you can use the internet as an online diary, a documentation of your life. Above is just one way I document my life, and there are so many others, some on the internet, and some on pages in my room. 

Instagram is one of my favorite means of expressing online, and if you'd like to join my journey through life and recovery, you can follow me: @juliadiaries. 

How do you like to express online? Do you think that documentation through social networks is a good or bad thing? Let me know in the comments. 

Autumn Adventures

So this weekend my family and I went to a local park to hike with our lovely dog, Margot. It was a wonderful, cool autumn day with gray skies and the fireworks of fall--the vibrant leaves. When we got there we expected a normal, hike up to the top, where we would enjoy a lovely view and then go on home happy. But it didn't turn out like we had planned. We had a bit of an adventure along the way.

So we arrive at the park at noon, and find that it's absolutely beautiful. There were plenty of other people hiking, and most of them had dogs that enjoyed playing around with Margot. We had a lovely hike up, climbing rocks and getting Margot to jump up on logs and boulders. 

 Now, Margot is a strong, agile dog, so we always train her to jump up on all sorts of things, like rocks and tables, as you can see below. 

 

At the top of the hike, there was this lovely tower that you could climb up and see the spectacular Autumn view. 

This was the tower. Pretty high up, huh. So here's where the story starts. We climb this beautiful tower and get to the top. There's a gorgeous view, as you can see below. Now, it took an extremely long time to convince Margot to climb the tower. The stairs were very steep, and she was not enthusiastic. She climbed the first two staircases okay, but she absolutely refused to climb the final one, which led to the top. So I had to carry her. We eventually get to the landing at the top, and Margot bolts, trying to escape. She races away from me, and jumps up onto the edge of the tower, three stories high. It was crazy, we thought she was going to jump off the edge, which would've undoubtedly resulted in her death. She was trying to escape, so the moment she left my arms she looked for the quickest exit, and jumped up on the side, just like we always teach her. Everyone in the tower gasped with fear as she stood on the edge of the freaking stone tower. She hopped down really quickly, and all was well, but boy did she give us a heart attack. Oh man. There was a second when I thought my beloved puppy was going to fall to her death after I carried her up the stairs she was scared of climbing. Oh dear. We all laughed about it later, but boy was it scary. This tower was not small, and she jumped up on the side. Crazy. So that's the story from this lovely trip. Fun, huh. Once she jumped down I immediately put her leash back on and held onto her tight until we left. Man, that was scary. Anyway, enjoy the pictures we took at the top of this lovely tower, after we had been thoroughly scared to death by our nine month old dog. Fun stuff.