Week 4: Commitment

Fourth week of the r/clondon52 Challenge!

Okay, to start off with, I really struggle with open-ended assignments where you are given a single word as a prompt. In most cases, when I encounter things like this I hit the dictionary.

Oxford defines commitment as "the state of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc". The good folks over at Merriam-Webster go into a bit more detail: i) a promise to give or do something, ii) a promise to be loyal to someone or something, iii) the attitude of someone who works very hard to support something.

It's that last one, the attitude of someone, that spoke to me. What commitments to I have? Whelp, the clues are in the picture. Here's a hint: Everything in the photo was initial.

A Breakdown:

1. The zombie hotdog. I work with kids. I teach, I educate, I entertain, and I terrorize. I’m committed to ensuring that my students always have the best experience possible… even if that means wearing a smelly costume and chasing ‘em around.
2. The photo album is a bit of low hanging fruit. For the last 2,213 days I’ve taken a picture (today’s will be the 2,214th). Everyday, even when I don’t feel it, I get up, and press that shutter.
3. Binoculars. Throughout the year I’m involved with two different Citizen Science projects. Currently I’m working on Project Feederwatch (a science reason to watch birds!). In the spring I’ll switch over to Species at Risk monitoring and reporting. Been doing this now for a number of years, and I certainly have no plans on stopping anytime soon

Those are proly the easiest to define. But everything is part of my commitment. The ladder is me working on my fears (heights, needles, bats), the location in the basement is along my walking path; everyday at least thirty minutes of vigorous walking. Heck, even the geographic location is a testament to Commitment: my outdoor education centre as been closed to the public for almost three years due to the pandemic. I’m still here to keep an eye on the place in the understanding that someday I’ll be terrorizing children in a zombie hotdog costume again.