What Do We Need to Keep On Going in January? - thoughts about photography by Lidija Ivanek (SiLa)

It always feels like January is a bit difficult,a bit harder month to live through, to have the creative spark, enthusiasm and what ever it takes to keep on creating, keep on selling, exhibiting, etc. Lately we've seriously considered to move somewhere else... a new country with different attitudes, possibilities…
There is that constant struggle in Croatia, it seems that it never ends. For example, I went to Zagreb today to develop an old color film and while I was there I saw that they sell expired films in the store. I asked the lady if they have some rolls of film that is not expired for my Franka and the answer is no. Why? The distributors for Fuji, Kodak, Ilford... will not sell them any new until they sell all from stock that is already expired. Could you believe that? I had serious problems with studios in the past and their film scanning. They do not know how to do it right. I went to a different studio, all with tradition (one that represented professionalism in photography), the work they had done was pure tragedy. They lost it, I mean, professionalism, mastery.
I decided not to be like them. I decided to continue to strive for perfection and aesthetic improvement of “my view”.
I decided not to give up,even though my country is in severe economic crisis and even that for 2012. the government and all the financial experts announced an even more difficult time. Every day it's harder to get out of bed and go out to face poverty,unemployment, and worst of all, hopelessness ... and to find inspiration for beautiful, better, more joyful works.
I am not a social photographer.
I do not want to create works that will make us even more depressing, but I wish to give hope with reality. I start to work on something that should show memories, my memories of little joys from the past and little joys in the present. Today,on my trip to Zagreb, I found a lot of small joys. One of them is a new Esspreso coffee machine. God bless all the small everyday joys of life.
Chuck Swindoll says; ...Ours is a tough, rugged, wicked world. Aggression, rebellion, violence, cutthroat competition, and retaliation abound. Not just internationally but personally. … What possible influence could the servant-hearted people Jesus described in Matthew 5:1–12 have on a hard, hostile society like ours? What impact—how much clout—do the "poor in spirit," the "gentle," the "merciful," the "pure in heart," or the "peacemakers" actually have? Such feeble-sounding virtues seem about as influential as pillow fighting in a nuclear war. ...
Jesus—the One who first painted the servant's portrait—did not share this skepticism. But neither did He deny the battle.
...strange as it may seem, He went on to tell that handful of Jewish peasants (and all godly servants in every generation) that their influence would be nothing short of remarkable. They would be "the salt of the earth" and they would be "the light of the world." And so shall we!