It’s been a crappy day. There really is no other word for it. Just crappy. And not the kind of crappy where I stubbed my toe and can’t find my iPod. But the kind where all I wanted to do was sit on the couch watching Friends reruns while I made my way through half a container of fat-free Pringles (which I did and which will probably end badly for my digestive system). The kind of crappy where even watching TV didn’t sufficiently distract me, and that’s when I know it’s a genuinely bad day, because TV is almost always a magical elixir that makes everything okay. Except today.
So what’s a girl to do? All the things I should have been doing — running, writing, cleaning up my messy apartment — required too much energy, both physical and mental. So I grabbed my camera and my second lens, threw on my favorite baggy sweatshirt and ventured out to the Mall despite the chill in the air and the grey in the sky.
Taking pictures is therapeutic. At least for me. It is also a mental reprieve. Instead of thinking about all the things I really didn’t want to be thinking about, my brain was consumed with apertures and shutter speeds and framing a photo just right. Of course, I will have to go back to dealing with life eventually, but for an hour today, I escaped. Here are the results:

In the spring, these trees come alive with cherry blossoms for about two weeks. It is a photographer’s dream.