While I always knew having good health was more important than anything else, that knowledge is sometimes hard to really appreciate until an adverse health condition really knocks you out for a period of time. All of my life I've been in good health, although lately, I was wanting to return to a pattern of working out. I felt as though my day job, which is a desk job, was expanding my waistline and weakening my back.

At the beginning of this month, I somehow hurt my lower back, herniating two disks. Those two disks are now pinching nerves running down my left leg, causing pain and numbness. I can't bend at the waist or left knee, I can't sit in a chair, and I can't stand for too long. Despite taking plenty of prescription medications, sleeping is almost out of the question, due to the intense pain at night. I'm missing out on my day job, I'm confined to my home and I'm most definitely missing out on taking and editing any new photographs. Just this week, I missed two photography events with my local photography buds. I had to stay home and watch our Facebook group pages for their photographs, which were truly wonderful.

This is my favorite time of the year to do macro photography, with flowers, insects, and other interesting things all pretty much below my knees, where I can't get these days. I also can't hop into the car to go catch a beautiful sunset, nor wear my Spider holster weighed down with my heavy 70-200mm lens, nor walk around a summer festival with a monopod on my shoulder and snapping pictures with my photography buds.

While waiting for a doctor's appointment a full week away, I'm looking for 'safe' photography activities to do, to keep up my skills and stoke my creativity. I've thought of entering some photo contests, editing older images, and adding keywords to my catalog of images in Lightroom. I have to do my computer work at a modified, stand-up workstation I've made in my kitchen. Thank goodness I'm using a laptop for my photography editing, rather than a desktop computer! I also have dozens of photography books to read, when standing starts to hurt and I need to sit or lie down in a comfortable position for awhile.

Yes, cameras and lenses can be quite heavy and good physical health is essential in being able to use them. Photography requires having the ability to walk, stoop, bend, stretch, stand, and balance oneself, in order to get the best shot. Without good health, all that expensive, heavy equipment just sits in my camera bags, waiting for me to get better and get back out there, capturing nature's beauty. I hope I'm not out of commission for too long. It's hard sitting on the sidelines of life, not being able to capture it with photography.