Where Have I Been?
I've been on a writing hiatus. Why did I take a break?
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Hey folks. It’s been a while since I’ve sat and typed anything out long form. I enjoy writing, but I often find it draining. I think I’ve said before that I find it far easier to record a podcast or publish a YouTube video. I just seem to have difficulty transmitting my thoughts coherently when it comes to writing. My ADHD brain moves faster than I can write or type. I get frustrated with my poor grammar and spelling, and ultimately, I put too much pressure on myself to be consistent.
Layer on a good helping of self-doubt and writer’s block, and I decided that I needed a good long break from writing so that I could evaluate how I can better approach folding it into my creative life. I’m not sure that I have the answer to that question fully yet, but I do think that part of finding the answer is to start writing again here on Substack. Maybe it will be a once-a-month thing, maybe I’ll start working on some kind of zine that also incorporates writing with my photography. Maybe it will just be the errant ramblings that this seems to be turning into?
I think a lot of folks often respond to commentary like this with, “Don’t waste your energy on something you don’t enjoy.” But I do enjoy the end product. I enjoy the dialogue that writing here on Substack creates. The community that it helps build. I enjoy how it helps me look at my photography differently and creates a space where I’m often forced to look at other parts of my life and objectively think about how they impact how I use a camera to document the world as I see it.
So, what made me start stabbing away at the keyboard today all of a sudden?
Firstly, this summer has been strange. For the past 5 or 6 years, our family summer routine has been fairly consistent. After the kids get out of school, we take a week’s vacation somewhere in the U.S. A national park normally. Then, toward the end of the summer, we often take the bigger trip of two weeks, sometimes overseas. This year was different. My eldest child, my daughter, is off to college in a few weeks. As a result, we took the big family trip at the beginning of the summer, knowing she would not be around in late August to do something then. I’ve always been one to suffer from the post-vacation blues, but this year it felt like most of the summer has been anticlimactic after two weeks in Hawaii. I’ve even not photographed as much. But, she’s doing something that I never had the courage to do, which is follow her dreams and enter a highly competitive career field where there are no guarantees. She found her calling early and is fearlessly diving in headfirst. If she can do that, I can overcome my self-imposed hurdles and write more often.
Secondly, I realized while we were packing that there are some things only writing can do. She was taking down posters from her bedroom, the ones she wants to put up in her dorm room. I noticed one I had not seen before. The liner notes from Noah Kahan’s Stick Season vinyl. A 24x24 image taken by Vermont photographer Patrick McCormack. The image places Kahan slightly off-center in front of the local town clerk’s office. I immediately thought of Walker Evans. A documentary photo that is more than just documentary. It evoked a deep sense of place and person. It’s something that only words can describe. And this is why I need to incorporate more writing into my creative life again.
Finally, I’ve got to confront the fact that creatively, I’ve become “comfortable,” and growth never comes from places of comfort. It comes from the uncomfortable moments in life. Times when you take risks, expose yourself, let your guard down. Times when you become vulnerable. And, to me, writing does all these things. It exposes a personal weakness, it requires a close examination of how I feel about certain aspects of who I am, where I’ve come from and where I’m going. It creates a certain level of fear. But if I’m honest, I know when I take just a little time to write down my thoughts, I often gain a sense of clarity that I don’t often find from photography alone, which is why it’s important that I start to do so again, even if it’s on an irregular and unscheduled basis.
Even if it’s just for the purpose of putting my thoughts out there so that I don’t sit alone with them. The irony being that as I come to the end of writing this, I already have some fresh ideas about what I might write about over the coming months. It goes to show that sometimes we just need to get out of our own way and get on with whatever it is we keep putting off.
Bellow are a selection of my favorite images from 2 weeks in Hawaii
if you feel more comfortable with podcast, substack has that too but if you go that route many of us will miss your writing. so why not go like ... happy ... errr... middle? when you feel like, record yourself on your phone. later, listen to yourself and if you are happy, put all if that in writing.
best of luck to your daughter!
Please keep writing.