It’s not all about work.

It’s not how much money you have that’s relevant, but whether you feel rich.

It’s not all about work.

Yesterday I had a marvellous afternoon spa day at the beautiful Pennyhill Park. It was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries after 3 months of yet another lockdown.

I had several hours of swimming, relaxation and just enjoying. Brain switched off. I then had the most wonderful facial, neck and head massage and hand and feet massage. If I could have remained on that bed in the therapy room I would still be asleep now.

Sadly, I had to leave. But this is definitely something which is going to happen more regularly.

What are you doing to look after your health and wellbeing?

Mary Waring

Mary Waring is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Financial Planner and Money Mindset Coach, helping women transform their relationship with money so that they can become free and powerful. She is also the bestselling author of "The Wealthy Woman: A Man is Not a Financial Plan."

About the Author

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This was taken about halfway up the block on the east side of Broadway, between 79th and 80th Street. It's at the north end of the "Filene's Basement" store on the corner, and it's a place where I've often seen homeless people holding up a sign that asks for assistance...

With very rare exceptions, I haven't photographed these homeless people; it seems to me that they're in a very defensive situation, and I don't want to take advantage of their situation. But something unusual was happening here: the two women (who were actually cooperating, and acting in tandem, despite the rather negative demeanor of the woman on the left) were giving several parcels of food to the young homeless man on the right.

I don't know if the women were bringing food from their own kitchen, or whether they had brought it from a nearby restaurant. But it was obviously a conscious, deliberate activity, and one they had thousght about for some time...

What was particularly interesting was that they didn't dwell, didn't try to have a conversation with the young man;they gave him they food they had brought, and promptly walked away. As they left, I noticed the young man peering into his bag (the one you see on the ground beside him in this picture) to get a better sense of the delicious meal these two kind women had brought him...

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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me.

I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

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The only other thing I've noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.

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It’s not all about work.

It’s not how much money you have that’s relevant, but whether you feel rich.