I haven’t had a cute animal photo on a Monday for ages. One of the main reasons for this is not because I am over cute animals (never), but I was having the hardest time finding credit for the photographs and couldn’t keep adding cute animal images without credit without huge amounts of guilt involved. When I came upon Li Ward’s work I knew I wanted to show it off. Even better is that Li is not only a photographer (lifestyle, pet + wedding) but a calligrapher!   It gets better, really, truly. Li pens a little blog that is honest + funny. Word on the street is people aren’t reading that many blogs anymore, but if you want to be inspired I think Li’s blog is worth a look.  Let’s talk inspiring, shall we?  Li armed with a computer science degree joined the dot.com industry, was bored (she gets bored often) so she started photographing her rescue cats, kudos and compliments ensued– Li ended up becoming a full-time photographer. Li liked to doodle and wanted to learn calligraphy, she took a two day Copperplate calligraphy class and within a year (a year!) she was voted Boston’s #1 calligrapher. I know there’s a ton of stock put into people focusing on one pursuit and you’ll become a success ot’s usually a good rule of thumb), but sometimes there’s that rare individual that has many interests and succeeds due to the passion they put into pursuing those endeavors. Did Li possess magic powers? No, she worked at it and then worked at it some more. She networked and wrote about her journey and I think these are all valuable lessons.  So, on this Monday morn I highly suggest that you consider following your heart, no matter how far fetched that may seem, you never know where you may end up.

P.S. I highly recommend you check out the links above so you can see how far Li has come!