I used to be a writer.

Whether I was any good at that vocation is up for debate, but a writer I once was.

I self-published two books and wrote for magazines and websites. I was never any good at fiction. Writing about stuff and things and telling the stories of others was where my meagre talents once lay.

Then, when my life fell apart, my public writings turned inward and I focused on journalling my private thoughts. They became an expression of the darkness I was feeling. Not fit for public consumption, these words and poems remain hidden away in that absence of light.

Ah, light.

I’ve spoken often about how it was photography that brought me back into the light. A visual celebration of rediscovering the beautiful little things we take for granted and, in turn, a rejoining of the natural world I had ignored while previously pursuing a life of stuff and things and ego-gratification. I began taking the time to appreciate the world around me, immersing myself in the light and the landscape or in the eyes of a fellow inhabitant of this wondrous planet we share. Simply put, photography taught me to slow down, reconnect to nature, see the unseen and quiet a hurried mind.

But photography doesn’t happen all the time. Truthfully, it doesn’t happen enough, nor do I make the day-to-day effort to find moments in nature, sans camera, that I should. The pressures of owning four small businesses and keeping yourself fed and watered, figuratively and literally, under capitalism’s relentless boot are constant. So that hurried mind seems a more perpetual state than I care to admit.

These days, my writings tend to reflect that hurriedness; quick notes about grievances past or present; a way to get the inner thoughts out, and certainly not a deeper, poetic or more introspective look at the things that truly resonate with me in meaningful ways.

There are a handful of photographers whose visual work I admire greatly but whose philosophy and written expression of their work and time in nature, moves me far more than others. The contemporary writings of people like Guy Tal, Alister Benn, Eric Bennett, and Andrew Baruffi and old skool naturalists/wordsmiths such as Edward Abbey, Hermann Hesse, Minor White, Everett Ruess, or John Muir come to mind, and I find myself at a loss as to why I can’t find ways to similarly and poetically express what it is that I feel when I’m in the field, lost in a moment.

I used to be a writer, afterall. You’d think the words would come easily.

But they don’t.

You’d think living alone and working primarily from home would give me ample time to turn my thoughts into words.

But it doesn’t.

No, as much as it pains me to admit, I fill the moments of loneliness not with contemplation or expression but with distraction. When not lost in thought about running a major photography event, or three annual toy and comic shows or keeping a tattoo shop thriving during an industry downturn or how I’m ever going to rid myself of the voluminous amount of toy and comic inventory I’ve accumulated, I turn to even more distraction: texting friends, doomscrolling, reading the news, putting on familiar TV shows or movies, all just to keep the chaos of the inner mind at bay.

As we all know, this form of “distraction” creates even more anxiety and does nothing to quiet a hurried mind.

The way we’re forced to share our artistic work on the content consumption machines becomes an act of hurriedness in and of itself as well. Get the post up, slap some words on it, reply to comments, get on with the day and do it all again tomorrow. Feed the machine your art, your passion, your most soulful experiences only to have it chewed up and churned into the chum of constant content used to harvest data, buoy ads and the monstrous revenues of our tech landlords. Or, even worse, to be used as the basis for some AI slop made by a basement-dwelling mouth-breather too busy writing prompts at a keyboard to actually get out and experience life in this fascinating and ever-enticing world. Why even bother writing something meaningful for something that most people will barely even acknowledge?

My work deserves better than that.

Yours does too.

But I wonder, maybe my pictures alone are enough? Do I actually need the words to express what I felt in that moment? How the landscape makes me feel? How connecting with another creature resonates in my soul? Will people feel it through the image or do I need to translate it into prose and elucidation, trying to convince people (or myself) that I’m so much more at peace than I actually am?

My hurried mind often doesn’t give me the time to express the depth of what I’ve felt when taking each photo; when my mind was slow. It’s a dichotomy that’s hard to reconcile but it doesn’t mean there’s not a delicate balance to it all. I can’t be the photographer’s philosopher who spends all his waking hours forest bathing and field wandering, waxing meditatively on the immersive feelings I have, no more than I can be a business owner perpetually consumed by the nuance of survival. One often begets the other and that’s where the balance is found.

Quieting our minds and finding the eloquence of flow states can also come in many forms. I can lose myself for hours in conference planning just as easily as I can behind a camera. I can quiet my mind with comic books just as easily as I can with the click of a shutter. I can stop the noise anytime I choose, I just need to choose to do it; to stop and take five deep breaths, go for a walk or do some stretches.

Beautiful words can flow alongside my pictures when needed and quick descriptions or no captions at all can be equally as powerful. By showcasing my work here on my website, I can step outside the machinations of social media and slow my viewer down. I can curate galleries and tell tales, and while sometimes those stories may be more factual than flowery; more documentarian than deep, they’re still MY stories, my words and my way of expression.

As I creep ever closer to 50, I’m naturally being forced to pump the brakes. I just can’t keep up the hectic hustle of entrepreneurship I’ve been engaging in for the better part of 20 years. I want to slow down. I need to slow down. I am slowing down. And in so a slowing, I have no doubt the wisdom that comes with aging will find its way into my words and the hurried mind will slowly become a distant memory.