Hello Ladies,
I got an invitation from @bloghound to participate in this contest. I needed to think about it. To be honst I don’t like talking a lot about myself. But I have to admit that while reading her post, I got to know her better. So here I go!
Just a quick edit: I forgot to invite someone ... So I hereby invite @thisismylife to join!
First I will start with a very short background story to clarify my situation. It’s part of who I am now.
As a yound woman (20 years) I always dreamed to have my own business. My plan was to work a few years to save and start something by myself. I’m now talking about the early 90’s and I wanted to have a computer shop. So far so good.
1992 was a difficult time. All my plans and dreams were destroyed. I got very ill and after a struggle of several months the doctors told me that I have a muscular dissease. A year later I was paralized and needed surgery. My whole world collapsed!
The recovery took very long. I was in a wheelchair for 9 years, had a serious depression. Luckily my husband always supported me and we fought our battle together! It took me years to recover from the depression and finding joy in life again. But thanks to my lovely hubby we also achieved that. He encouraged me to find a passion.
So far the background. At this moment my illness is under control. I’m still not able to do a lot of fysical things, but I don’t regret that anymore. One thing I could do was swimming. But that was a bit boring to me, so I started scuba diving. Being in the water is good for my muscles and bang! I found my passion. My doctor was impressed by the results and one day I told him I wanted to be a scuba instructor. And believe it or not … I achieved that goal. I didn’t want a career in the diving business because my body couldn’t handle that. But I wanted to proof myself that I could achieve that. And when you have a passion, it’s unbelieve what you’re capable of! So follow your dreams, life your passions to the fullest!
I travelled all over the world to discover the underwater world as much as I could. And at a certain point I stranded in the Philippines. The warm climate was a relief for my body and that was the start of hopping between 2 countries.
After 5 years (due to the pandemic) I returned back to Belgium. End of a chapter in my life, ready to move on to the next one: Spain.
My second passion is photography. I started with an analog camera but I wasn't really into it. The problem was the cost of the development of the film rolls. So I just took some classic holiday pictures. Years later we entered the digital camera era! Woohooo ... No more costs of developping and you could see the results immediately! Now it was time to start experimenting with photography. I started with a very simple point and shoot camera. In those days a digital camera costs a fortune. And I liked it. Later on I followed evening classes to improve myself and switched to a digital dslr camera. I tried to find my own style and slowly I was making some improvement. I tried different types (we had the assignments in class) and quickly find out what I like and what not. I'm not a portrait photographer. For me the best ones are the one I can do by myself. In my own comfort bubble. Just me and my camera, we make a good team 😁
I'm very lucky that I can combine my 2 passions: underwater photography.
I always wanted to have a tattoo and of course it's dive related!
Well congratulations on reaching the end of this post. Sorry it was so long, but it's hard to tell in a few lines.
You can forget about everything I wrote, just remember to follow your dreams and turn them into passions! 😘
All pictures in this post are made by me. The collages are made with CollageMaker, using my own pictures.
