What is the best moment of your ordinary, everyday days?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t mean the best moment ever, like when you brought home your first baby, or first puppy. Or won the lottery or bingo or met your true love. I mean on any ordinary workday or weekend that is otherwise blessedly uneventful and normal, what is the best moment for you?

For me, it’s always been when I come home, when I walk in the door. When I was a kid, coming home after school. It just felt like “I’m back! I’ve made it safely through the day and I’m back in my nest.”

That’s true to this day, although I’m retired and don’t even go out to do consulting work anymore. Even if I go out to lunch with someone, or go shopping, or get my hair done, or do my mall walk… just walking back in my own house in the morning, midday, afternoon, early evening, late at night–doesn’t matter. Applies to weekends, too. I feel like I’m safe back in my cave with my two cats and dog. Once I get both cats in for the night and lock my doors, that feeling only intensifies. And as it gets later and I’m not likely to get any phone calls, it’s even better. I’m all tucked in with no more challenges, obstacles, questions ahead of me.

Nothing compares to the feeling of “home again!”

2

Waking up after sleeping okay. ( I never sleep great). And that first cup of coffee. So good.

3

If it’s gotta be something that happens near-every day, then that would be taking my shoes and socks off after having them on all day and stretching out my poor suffering toesies in the cool open air. Ahhhhhhhh…

There are certainly things that give me more pleasure than that that happen now and then - the most significant examples of which probably would be relating to a particularly good show I’d be watching/rewatching. But for a regular thing? Freeing the feet.

4

I wouldn’t call it my best but it is a favorite moment: when I pull out of my neighborhood and I crank my car stereo up. I like my music loud and can’t indulge nearly as often or as loudly as I would like, so every opportunity to really crank it up is very, very satisfying.

5

The moment when I have dialed in the perfect shower temperature, and the room has steamed up sufficiently, and I can stand there in perfect bliss for a few minutes and let my thoughts wander.

6

Crawling into bed and spooning my wife. Close tie with hugs from the boys when I get home.

7

When I change from the steel toe work shoes into the comfy clogs to go home. The dog knows that means it is time to go and starts doing his get the leash dance. Look at the leash, look at the door, look at me, prancing his feet. Love that.

8

Yeah, this. My first and only cup of coffee each morning is a welcome ritual that if missed for any reason, leaves me cross for the whole day.

I get the “back in the nest” happy shiver, too – but a nest with no morning coffee is no nest at all! :slight_smile:

9

Three are great. Thanks.

I didn’t mean necessarily every day, just regular stuff, not those pivotal life-changing events.

Getting out of tight shoes…ahhhh…

10

Coming home to my baby.

11

If it is a Monday or Tuesday, it’s when my kid (20 yo) comes home from work, just as I’m waking up and comes in and tells me about his night at work (night audit at a hotel) and we talk for an hour or so until he goes to bed and I need to get ready for work.

Any other day, it’s that first sip of coffee…I don’t even have to get out of bed for it as my husband leaves the carafe and cup on the nightstand.

12

It’s a toss up between my daily shower and cracking open a beer after getting home from work.

13

Workdays, lunch and ending work. Weekends, taking a second nap for the day and still having sunlight when I wake up! :smiley: Even better if I wake up as usual, around 5-5:30 in the morning, crack up the A/C and take a nap after breakfast around 9-10am, and wake up thinking it’s nighttime and find out it’s not even noon! Even better on a Sunday!!

14

My kids are older, but it’s still mostly this: when I see my kids at the end of the workday, and when I pick up my kindergartener and she acts like I’m a eucalyptus tree and she’s a koala, it’s pretty freakin fantastic.

15

Getting a text from my daughter at night that says “Good night Daddy!”

16

Sitting down to a bowl of Rice Krispies in the morning and accessing The Dope while I eat.

17

Yes, its so fun with the kids.

Also I’m a teacher and I just love it when the kids suddenly (or not so suddenly) get something. Right now, I’m working with the kids to be able to tell the difference between the short “a” sound (like the “a” in “bad”) and the short “e” sound as in “bed.” Out of 160 students in the middle and upper kindergarten years (ages four to six) only six could tell at first. Now about 40% can. Just that sudden something that happens and children who couldn’t do something now are able to.

It’s just a normal thing in that it comes with teaching, but it’s such an awesome process.

18

Weekdays 8am when I get up and watch “PA Books” on PCN; our state public cable channel. Many times I know either the subject, author, or at least the topic it was written on. And when I don’t its always informative being a one hour show.

19

During the week - closing my office door for a mid-morning 15 min nap - heaven.
Weekends - having lunch and spending the afternoon with my kids

20

I’m probably alone in this, but for me, it’s my job! I’m the photographer for a car dealership that specializes in restored American muscle cars and European imports (nothing that exotic, but a lot of Mercedes, Jaguars, and vintage Volkswagens.) Most common cars I shoot are Corvettes (70s-90s) and Mustangs (60s-90s) including many Shelbys.

I arrive at the shop, get behind the wheel of whatever car I’m shooting (after it gets finished with the detailing bay), drive it out back to the large empty lot that we use for shoots which conveniently includes three good photo backdrops: a pond, a tree-line, and a corner with some steel shipping containers which are just rusty enough to look “industrial” without looking like “junk”. These shoots take several hours as I have to move the car/s (typically more than one on an average day) around the lot quite a bit, the optimal setup for the best shots is highly dependent on the position of the sun and/or clouds, and I have to get a wide variety: medium/long shots for shallow depth of field (for the conventional “portraits” of the car - 3/4, 2/3, 1/3, front, sides and back); close up wide-angle shots for dynamic lines (particularly important with long and sleek cars like Corvettes), and close up details of both the interior and the exterior. (And some of these interiors- especially on 60s and the odd 50s showcar - are absolute works of art, Space Age/fighter jet influenced stuff, the kind of crazy and beautiful dashboards and dials of a bygone era.)

Oh yes, and the engine - actually one of my favorite parts of the car to shoot. Every engine bay, every hose and wire and engine block and radiator and all the rest of it, they all tell a unique visual story and they all need to be documented meticulously. I take a few wide shots of the whole engine compartment from multiple angles, and then use a 120mm (with macro capability!) to get in close for highly detailed shots of the individual components with a nice shallow depth of field fuzzing out everything outside of the focus plane - the result is often extremely “painterly” and beautiful, at least if everything under the hood is clean and well maintained. And especially if it’s all fully restored.

Oh yeah - the underbody. This isn’t Craigslist and the people buying these cars need to see EVERYTHING in the pictures before they decide if they want to go to the trouble of driving out (often from out of state) to look first-hand. I get under there with a very wide (12mm) lens and get plenty of pictures of the frame, axles, suspension, exhaust, all the important parts. The objective here is NOT to “trick” the viewer or make things look prettier than they are. It’s to show them honestly what’s there.

I only ever ramble on and on like this about something if I really love doing it, and so yeah, I really love doing it. Oh, and it’s not over when I leave the lot, either - the other half of it is editing the RAW images in Photoshop for the best combination of color balance, contrast, clarity, saturation, etc. (Some of the cars don’t need any saturation boost whatsoever - they’re already so damn colorful they practically make your eyes bleed…for others it’s essential to make the paint pop.) But every one is a new challenge and a new chance to experiment with different ideas…this is my dream job, basically.

I have a second job as a real estate broker (working with buyers, not sellers), but I don’t work that many clients at once so it’s slow, with a lot of down time in between the initial offer and the closing. It’s a good long term income source but requires patience because the payoff is slow…not to mention that I might show someone houses sporadically for months before he or she makes an offer. During all those long periods of inactivity with the transactions, the car photography fills the gaps so I can stay busy, because I feel best when I stay busy.