Published, Once Again
I’ve been staring at this website for three years.
Not constantly—I’m not that obsessive. But it’s been sitting in my Squarespace dashboard since 2022, half-built, with placeholder text that said things like “Coming soon” and “More content on the way.” The kind of promises you make when you’re excited about an idea but not quite ready to commit to the work.
Here’s what happened in those three years: I got a job that has helped me achieve financial stability and extra time from the lack of a regular commute. I found someone who is a solid presence in my life, bringing emotional stability. I moved out of my parents’ house (finally) into a place where I did not have to worry about second-guessing my own decisions, bringing logical stability.
Basically, I spent three years building a life that feels stable enough to handle creative vulnerability again.
The photography never stopped. I’ve been posting Instagram and Facebook photos of sunsets at Seal Beach Pier, smiling patrons at an elote stand in Santa Ana, and lots and lots and LOTS of bird photos taken from my really large telephoto which I lovingly dub, “MegaLens.” The dopamine hit of likes and comments was satisfying enough for a while.
But here’s the thing: every time I posted a photo, I found myself typing a caption, deleting it, retyping it, then settling for some generic phrase like “Sunset nights” followed by hashtags for my camera gear and the #sunsetsofinstagram feed. I had more to say, about how I felt taking this picture, or the circumstances that led me to this one scene. But I didn’t feel like what I had to say would work in a social media format.
Social media gives you instant gratification, but it doesn’t give you the fulfillment of having expressed an emotion fully and thoroughly. It doesn’t give you the space to think out loud. And thinking out loud—working through ideas by writing them down—has always been how I made sense of things. (If you've read any of my previous writing, you know I have a compulsive need to analyze my own analysis.)
So here we are. The website is live, the first post is happening, and I’m curious to see what develops when I give myself permission to elaborate again. Not every photo needs an essay, but some of them do. And some days, I might just want to write about the ordinary weirdness that I see in front of me every day.
Here’s to a successful relaunch!
