Tag: life

  • the crash

    One of the feet of my grandparents’ 1940s couch…the couch lives in our bedroom now, but this photo was taken as part of a series I did several years ago called One Hundred Sixteen.

    Yeah.

    I’ve given up cheese and bread and most processed foods. Most of the things I’ve survived on for the 46 years of my life.

    So it stands to reason that when I get hungry, and let too much time go between meals, I’d get a little despondent.

    Several years ago, probably in 2016 or so, I thought I was dying. I’d had radioactive iodine ablation therapy on my thyroid the year before, and my thyroid levels were not leveling out as they should have. And my calcium levels were high, and I felt terrible, and my endocrinologist was not sure there wasn’t something screwy going on with my pituitary gland….

    And I took several of the photos I’d taken in the five years’ prior, and converted them all to black and white and made them into square formats, and made a photo book out of them, and called the project One Hundred Sixteen, related to our address at the time. And I had Ilford silver gelatin prints made of all the photos in the book…..I wanted my husband and kids to have the best of what I had done with the previous five years, in photos, things that my eye had captured over the years.

    The photo above is one of those photos included in the book and prints.

    And that is how we came to have a crap ton of silver gelatin prints of my early work around the house, and even more live in a drawer in our dining room now, just taking up space.

    I don’t have the exif data from that file above, since it’s so heavily altered. But if I had to guess, I took that photo above with a Fuji X-T2 and probably the 56mm f1.2 lens or the 35mm f2 lens. Around that time period all I would have had was the 16mm, the 56mm, the 35mm f2, and the 90mm, all Fuji X Series native lenses. It was for sure either the Fuji X-T2 or the Fuji X-Pro 2 camera.

    I laid down for a nap earlier this afternoon because I was tired, and when I woke up I was in an awful, teary state.

    I sold off 4 GFX lenses and the second GFX 50sII body this summer, and now I deeply regret it.

    If I had the second body, I could go around with both Cinelux lenses on.

    If I had the 45-100mm and the 100-200mm lenses, I could better do wildlife photography.

    But at the time, I had things I wanted to do and we sort of needed the money and well…. so they went.

    And so my meltdown earlier today was about that, and was also about the fact that while nobody paying me doesn’t mean I’m not a photographer, I also realized what I have given up in closing down my business. Even if it cost massive amounts of money I never made with it.

    I miss people asking me to take pictures of things, and I miss even more having the gear I had to be able to do so.

    Now, arguably, the X-S20 is better for some of that than the GFX gear.

    But once you have shot with a medium format camera….it’s hard to go back.

    It’s sort of like people who have to downgrade lifestyle stuff.

    And I have worked hard these past couple of weeks. Our house isn’t perfectly clean but it is better. The window coverings situation is certainly better, having a dedicated laundry day is better, Nancy is better, having the garage emptied out feels better…..

    Having the garage empty means I can get back to my studio selfies. I should plan to do that in the next couple of days.

    But then I got through with my pity party enough to go make myself my smoothie– almond milk, wild blueberries, spinach powder, and a banana– and two sips into my smoothie it hit me:

    I was despondent because I was hungry.

    HA.

    Y’all, I am so used to processed foods and cheese and all the yummy goodness. But the things I am eating (today’s breakfast was late and it was almond flour crackers, decaf coffee with marine collagen, and walnut pieces, and I did allow myself a protein bar this morning)….. they metabolize faster. And take more preparation than just grabbing a string cheese and a protein bar, or some goat cheese and sunflower seeds……

    *sigh*

    I do feel better. I went to bed not depressed last night. It was nice to just know it was time to go to bed and not feel like the world was ending, or like someone was out to get me, a frequent feeling late at night.

    And there is personal drama I don’t care to go into going on, both for me and for Jared, and there’s just a lot going on.

    And I don’t feel particularly inspired to pick up my cameras, even if I pine away over gear I parted with.

    It all feels manufactured and pointless. Jared takes me to the Marina and I sit there with the camera in my hand and remember, not even really seeing what is in front of me.

    And honestly, the sunrise photos at the Marina and the duck pictures in the evening are boring at this point.

    It’s time for a personal project. And a reckoning.

  • my house is my self-esteem

    I trimmed back the hedges in the bed in front of our front porch this morning. Prior to trimming, they hedges were taller than the porch railing– that whole brush pile in the walkway is what I cut back. I even toted the brush pile to the street for pickup by myself!

    It’s for sure becoming apparent that the state of my self-esteem can absolutely be measured by how well I am tending to my house, or how interested I am in tending to my house.

    This morning, despite a late night waiting for Liam to get home, I managed to get Oliver to school, started towels (towels and sheets don’t count toward laundry day), have kept towels going all day so far. I did my morning meditation with my Calm app and did 20 minutes on my stationary bike (20 minutes instead of 30 because I haven’t done it in at least a month and a half and am really out of shape all over again).

    It’s time for some serious yard attention now that it is Fall. My goal yet this afternoon is still to get out and mow a section of the yard. But this morning, I managed to trim back those bushes you see in the photo above all by myself. That’s kind of a thing because I normally leave that sort of yard work to Jared– getting me to mow or blow off the driveway is usually cause for celebration enough.

    But I care about how our house looks and feels again, and the whole hedge trimming project took about 30 minutes total. I had to come in and rest after, and so here I am writing while I get up my energy to go mow, after having had a snack for lunch.

    But here’s the thing: Somewhere along the way in 2010 or so, I just utterly snapped. And I have floundered at times and I have done okay at times, and I have mostly been able to be social when out in public all along.

    But inside, I’ve felt defeated. I looked back on my school days both in grade school and high school and undergrad, and I did have quite a bit of academic promise. And then in my early career I had such interesting, impactful employment.

    And then, I had a very public episode and, job after job, the career-type promise went away.

    And I am doing my best to build back. Looking back now I can see for so many years I was grasping for instant repair.

    There is no instant repair for the kinds of trauma and mood issues I’ve dealt with in my life. In fact, I’ve run away from the kinds of healing that would really help, at times.

    So here I am, in late 2025, and I realize now that the next perfect job is not going to fix my heartbreak. The latest camera gear is certainly not going to fix my heart. The best thing I can do for myself is remind myself that I am capable. And there’s no better way to do that than to do what needs to be done– what I have been running from– and that is to tend to my home and family.

    Aside: waking up this morning with the new sheers was amazing. I was in the bed until 7 and the light was just starting to come up, and the uniform light entering the house, growing little by little as the minutes went by, was balm for my soul. That was exactly what I needed, and I am thrilled with the effect. Letting my body work with the sun is also good for my soul and mental health.

    Every day won’t be perfect. I know I have to expect depression to come back with its darkness again.

    But it seems to be true: When I want to run from my house, when I want to start over, it’s not really about the house. It’s about myself.

  • a good day

    Atlanta fine art photographer


    No pretty pictures from the day. This is a photo from 2013, 3 houses ago.

    But one night sleeping without coverings on the double doors, and new window treatments are on the way.

    I spent the day ironing. Lots and lots of ironing.

    But, all the windows have their new treatments. I am happy.

    And, all of a sudden, I am re-invested in my house.

    And maybe hyped up a little bit that I actually have an interest in (and have completed) a project.

    I am so very, relieved to love my house again. It’s been quite a long time.

    Today, I feel like I’ve been a good wife and mother.

    I worked my tail off today, no joke. I didn’t sit down much.

    And, while I was ironing window treatments, I also finished laundry day.

    Laundry day doesn’t have to be one day, as Dana from A Slob Comes Clean says. And she’s right.

    In our case, laundry day actually wasn’t that bad. It started half-heartedly on Monday since I didn’t think of it until halfway through the morning and only worked on it a little bit (I always like to have laundry day be Monday) and it will end about 10:30 PM tonight, when the last load finishes in the dryer and I am able to get everything put away.

    And now I don’t have to think about clothes laundry for the rest of the week.

    Sheets will be another thing: I should get all the sheets in the house cleaned sooner than later.

    I think tomorrow will be another good run through the floors and putting the clutter in the primary bedroom away.

    At some point in the next couple of weeks I have to get to Porter’s room finally.

    I was listening to one of the many podcasts I listen to today and somebody said (I cannot remember which podcast) that the state of your home mirrors the state of your mind.

    In my case, that’s probably 100% true. There’s lots of dust, and clutter, and dirty laundry and dirty floors in my head, too.

    It was a good day. Oliver was inducted into the National Junior Beta Club, and we got to see the live broadcast of the CHS Trojan Band on the Gradick Sports Facebook page when we got home. They did such a great job, like they always do.

    It’s harder for me to be charitable about Central, my alma mater. The inside jokes are tired and they are inside jokes from well after my time. It’s hard to feel like an outside as an alum from my own band. But it’s been the case for a decade or more.

    I got to meet Oliver’s new girlfriend and family. They seem nice.

    Yes, my 6th grader has a girlfriend. *sigh* We managed to skip these things with the big boys, and are still so far even. It’s not even Oliver’s first girlfriend.

    I have tried, however, to encourage all of my children to not get into serious relationships until well after high school. I speak from experience on how that can go really, really, really awfully bad. Most of you probably know that story and if you don’t I think I made another post about it here somewhere.

    At any rate, I will go to bed tired tonight. And I desperately hope I wake up in such a state that I can do it all over again tomorrow.

    You can read more about my angsty self here.

  • going team bare windows

    Drastic times call for drastic measures.

    We bought our current house in 2021.

    This is the only house we have purchased that I actually picked out.

    And…..I have struggled mightily with my mental health in this house.

    It doesn’t get a great deal of light. Well, I mean, the ginormous living room actually does get great light, but it was outfitted with equally imposing dark royal blue blackout curtains. Here they are, this morning:

    And yes….the blue curtains in the living room perfectly matched the shade of the blue valances (and wallpaper) in the dining room.

    At least the people who designed our 1994 house, which this is all original to, had stellar taste. Everything still looks fabulous 30 years later.

    But….. I struggle mightily with my mental health, which is likely known to you all at this point by now. And when we moved in 2021, we moved from a house that I moderately despised because of its stairs.

    But what I loved about that Holmes Drive house was its light. That house had fantabulous light, in both the kitchen and the main living room.

    So, this happened today:

    The photos are not the greatest representation of how much better the light is in the house– I took them this morning just after taking the curtains down and it was overcast. And I am sort of rebelling against my camera gear at the moment, so all I did was phone photos. I might take better photos once the job is all done.

    The dining room photo above is after the work in there too– there were paper shades over the windows in there prior to about an hour ago.

    If I had my way, we would be team bare windows in the entire house. I am not much worried about privacy.

    But, we are taking down the paper shades throughout the house, in favor of brand new sheers. They arrive tomorrow, so tomorrow’s project will for sure be taking down the eight other shades in the windows of the house.

    The paper shades were my solution to the extremely off-white, very thin metal blinds that came with the house. I hated them and they came down as soon as possible.

    And they have served their purpose, and we certainly got what little money we put into them out of them.

    But many of them in the boys’ rooms (and the ones in the dining room, actually), had been torn by the cats, and Oliver’s in particular are in very bad shape because Mow, his cat’s scratching post is right beside one window and she has gotten it all furry and bent out of shape.

    So, I will not be sorry to see the shades go in favor of sheers.

    And honestly, I’d worry more about security, but our alarm systems, both furry and actual, are fantastic.

    I just desperately need natural light.

    The good news is, taking down the curtains in the living room has made me not feel like the room needs to be painted quite so much. I do love a basic white wall.,

    And we are not taking down the hardware fast, as I am keenly aware that the blackout curtain do actually do quite a lot of insulation in the winter.

    But…that is when I need the light the most.

    Regardless: I feel better about my house, and I feel better about my life. Which makes me more invested in both.

  • not a soul-sucking day

    Just outside Newberg, Iowa last February

    Picture of vastness nothing Iowa cornfields that I took last February because it’s pretty akin to a desert, and I am kind of in that sort of mindset right now. It was a cold day.

    I’m not exactly depressed but not exactly vibrant and bubbly like I prefer to be.

    Nancy is better, and she seems to be eternally grateful to be alive. For once, she is very loving and interactive, which we are taking to mean that she understands that we did quite save her life (or at least her tongue) by getting her to the vet the other night. No more black drool or black crusty stuff around her mouth, and she’s eating and drinking as she should.

    We are not holding our collective breath that Nancy’s change in disposition is at all permanent.

    We put Nancy in Porter’s room, and moved Bess in there too, along with all their litter boxes, and have been feeding them canned food since that is what Nancy needs for at least the next few days. They both seem to appreciate the treat, and probably the respite from chaos of the dogs.

    And, I have gotten beyond my frozen action on cleaning the house: Today I cleaned the entirety of our guest bathroom in our laundry room. I cleaned the floors, baseboards, toilet, corners of the room, and sink and toilet. And dusted off the top of the intercom even though we never use it, and cleaned the top of the trash can even.

    The whole endeavor took me about half an hour.

    If I can spend this kind of dedicated time on even a section of a room in the house each day, then the house will be relatively clean in a few weeks.

    That is encouraging.

    I have also started budgeting more in earnest. Or rather: I am making a concerted effort to not spend money we don’t have right now.

    While Jared and I went on a date to Gallery Row tonight, we are not likely to do that on a regular basis.

    I did try a little photography today. This is a cameo ring I made for myself; I have several of these cameo rings I made. I had planned to post them on Etsy but honestly, I am not feeling it a great deal as far as Etsy stores go right now. I missed focus on the girl in the cameo and had to clean it up with Topaz Photo AI. This was with the GFX camera and the 37.5mm Super Cinelux lens– it’s. a great macro lens.

    I do not know how old this bird is; Sarah Belle gave it to me when I was in third grade but she said then that she had had it since she was a little girl, and she was born in 1920.

    And tonight, I am going to bed with hope for the future. I am almost ready to seek out more regular volunteer opportunities. I am ready to reinvest myself in our home, which I did quite fall in love with in 2021 when we found it.

    And today…..today was a good day.